Gadgets
WhatsApp to Bring End-to-End Encrypted Cloud Backups in the Coming Weeks
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday announced through a post on the platform that WhatsApp has completed building end-to-end encrypted backups and will soon begin rolling out the new layer of privacy and security protection to users.
The end-to-end encrypted backups will be available as an optional feature that users need to manually enable on the app. It will be rolled out to both Android and iOS devices in the coming weeks, the Facebook-owned company said.
Users will be able to enable end-to-end encryption for their chat backups on WhatsApp by creating a password that they will be required to restore their backup in the future. Alternatively, WhatsApp will also be able to use their 64-digit encryption key for authentication.
By enabling end-to-end encryption for backups, users will be able to protect their chat history from being accessed by any third parties. The company claims that neither WhatsApp nor the backup service provider including Apple and Google will have access to the end-to-end encrypted key and backups of users.
WhatsApp has been allowing users to keep their chat backups on Apple iCloud in case of iPhones and on Google Drive in case of Android phones. But in both cases, the backups stored in the cloud are not protected by an end-to-end encryption from the WhatsApp side. This means that the data could be read by a third party. It has brought some instances in which third parties including law-enforcement agencies might have gained user data access. This is where the new end-to-end encrypted backups could be helpful.
The level of security through the new feature will be identical to how WhatsApp messages are protected under end-to-end encryption. However, WhatsApp engineers need to work hard to implement the advancement — particularly considering the fact that there are more than two billion users on the app who send over 100 billion messages a day and most of them use cloud backups to protect their chat history.
With end-to-end encrypted backups, WhatsApp will encrypt the chat messages and all the existing messaging data including text, photos, and videos that is being backed up using a random key that will be generated on the device.
WhatsApp has built a Hardware Security Module (HSM) based Backup Key Vault that will come into effect when a user is opting for a personal password to protect their chat backups. This Vault service will save encryption keys for user backups on a per-user basis and work as a physical locker in your bank to store the keys that help keep backups secured with a user-provided password. It returns the key after validating your password each time when you need to restore your end-to-end encrypted backup. The service also ensures that the encryption key won’t be provided after a certain number of unsuccessful attempts.
To avoid data centre outage issues, WhatsApp says that it is keeping the Backup Key Vault service geographically-distributed across multiple data centres.
“Because the backups are encrypted with a key not known to Google or Apple, the cloud provider is incapable of reading them,” WhatsApp said in a whitepaper.
It is important to note that if a user forgets their password and loses access to their phone, they will not be able to recover their encrypted backup.
In case a user is not opting for the password option for their end-to-end encrypted backups and are using a 64-digit key instead, they will be required to manually enter the key on the app to decrypt and access their backups.
WhatsApp was initially spotted bringing end-to-end encrypted backups on its platform in July. Last month, the app was also found to be working on extending end-to-end encryption to local backups, though there is no official word on its rollout.
That said, the end-to-end encrypted backups feature will initially reach beta testers on Android and iOS in the coming days — before reaching end users.
“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.
Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.
Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.
In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.
To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.
Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.
The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.
Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.
The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.
For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
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