WhatsApp will add support for encrypted message backups

You will soon be able to keep your message backups safe from prying eyes.

WhatsApp is going to make storing old texts on its popular messaging service a bit safer. The app’s parent company Facebook announced today it will soon add support for encrypted message backups.

The end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) backups can create a randomly generated 64-digit encryption key for any messages that WhatApp users want to save. Then those encrypted messages can be stored on cloud services like Google Drive or iCloud.

Users will also have the option of creating a password for their old messages. In that case, the randomly generated key is stored in a Backup Key Vault with a hardware security module (HSM). Once the messages are stored, users can then type in their password to the Backup Key Vault to get their encrypted key and unlock the old messages from storage. The key will become inaccessible once a certain number of unsuccessful password attempts are made.

WhatsApp has released a whitepaper that goes into far more technical detail on how this new feature will work. Encrypted message backups should start rolling out sometime in the coming weeks to Android and iOS users.

source: androidauthority.com