this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024
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I think you might have misread the article (or maybe I have?). I think the article is saying that other people (a 3rd party that is not Meta) can use some metadata clues to puzzle out which OS a user is using WhatsApp from. The article then says this is bad because an attack can target specific OSes or tailor their attack to the user's OS. Eg. Hacker has an evil link that abuses an exploit on Android only. They can figure out who is signed into WhatsApp on android and only send those people the evil link.
I read it, I just believe that meta knew what they were doing. I also believe there are other fingerprints they are using while hiding behind the whisper protocol to say they are e2ee.
Oh it's really easy to fingerprint a device on Android so I'm 99% sure they are fingerprinting you in one way or another. But this seems to be an overly complicated way of doing it. It does really just seem like an unintentional design flaw.
If they fix it and randomise then I'd say you're right. But from the article they didn't say they would.