Antonio M. Espinoza, William J. Tolley, and Jedidiah R. Crandall, UNM; Masashi Crete-Nishihata and Andrew Hilts, Citizen Lab
End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is becoming a standard feature in many popular chat apps, but independent security assessments of these implementations are limited. In this paper we provide the first independent analysis of E2EE features in LINE, a messaging application popular in Asian markets, and identify a replay attack and an attack on a lack of forward secrecy. Based on our analysis and communications with LINE about the vulnerabilities we discuss challenges and new research directions to better bridge vendors, researchers, and end-users around security issues.
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author = {Antonio M. Espinoza and William J. Tolley and Jedidiah R. Crandall and Masashi Crete-Nishihata and Andrew Hilts},
title = {Alice and Bob, who the {FOCI} are they?: Analysis of end-to-end encryption in the {LINE} messaging application},
booktitle = {7th {USENIX} Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the Internet ({FOCI} 17)},
year = {2017},
address = {Vancouver, BC},
url = {https://www.usenix.org/conference/foci17/workshop-program/presentation/espinoza},
publisher = {{USENIX} Association},
}