The Guardian has drawn the ire of a large number of cryptography and security experts by publishing a story claiming Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability that WhatsApp has a security backdoor that would allow it , or governments , to snoop on encrypted messages . The group of experts , led by Associate Professor Zeynep Tufekci have written an open letter demanding that the article is retracted and for The Guardian to issue an apology for the misleading claims . The article , written by freelance journalist Manisha Ganguly reported claims Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability originally made by a UC Berkeley PhD student Tobias Boelter last year . He showed Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability that under certain conditions a government could , with the cooperation of WhatsApp , gain access to the content of a small number of messages . The consensus of 40 of the most respected people from the security and cryptographic community however was that the behaviour described by PhD student Tobias Boelter , and sensationalised in The Guardian article , was simply a design decision taken by WhatsApp developers and represented a very small risk , if any , to the vast majority of users . The Guardian has so far refused the demands of Professor Tufekci and her colleagues and simply updated the article changing the word “ backdoor ” for “ vulnerability ” and including a statement from WhatsApp stating categorically that “ WhatsApp does not give governments a ‘ backdoor ’ into its systems and would fight any government request to create a backdoor ” . Tufekci made the point that The Guardian ’ s article had endangered people because they would switch to less secure forms of communication over concerns that governments could be potentially listening into conversations . The suggestion that people should use the potentially more secure app Signal was not going to work for most people because it was less user-friendly and simply by using an app like Signal could actually alert government agencies that they had something to hide . The Guardian article took the claims of a PhD student and failed to get input into the issue from a single recognised security or cryptography expert . The opinions quoted in the article came from three people who , although involved with privacy at the policy and user level , were by no means subject matter experts and couldn ’ t possibly have claimed to understand what had been implemented . In fact , Moxie Marlinspike , the developer behind Signal , the protocol that gives WhatsApp its end-to-end encryption also came out emphatically supporting WhatsApp ’ s implementation of the Signal Protocol . The Guardian has since published several other articles about WhatsApp including one by Tobias Boelter attempting to justify the claims Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability of there being a “ vulnerability ” in WhatsApp . It is important to note that this story was not picked up and reported independently by other reputable mainstream media sites ; a sure indication that other journalists weren ’ t buying into the claims . Even the tech media didn ’ t report on it other than some sites simply reporting what The Guardian had claimed .