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This repository was archived by the owner on Feb 12, 2022. It is now read-only.
This repository was archived by the owner on Feb 12, 2022. It is now read-only.

It should not be possible to add yourself to a group without invitation #77

@Meteor0id

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@Meteor0id

Although this is security related, it has already been publicized and is public knowledge.

This article: https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2018/01/10/attack-of-the-week-group-messaging-in-whatsapp-and-signal/
explains an issue in Signal where anyone could in theory invite themselves to a group. It does however require the attacker to know the ID of the group, which is only know by current or former group members.

At first it might not seem severe:

  • If an attacker would add themselves to the group, everyone in the group would see him join the group, thus he can be kicked out before any sensitive information is shared to the group.
  • A new group can be created to avoid this attacker from inviting himself again.
  • Messages send before the attacker joined the group will not be send to the attacker; in other words, he won't see the group conversation history.

However, this attack does have a use case in practice:
Say a group of protestors has a group chat in which they coordinate their upcoming protests. they kicked someone out of the group for some reason, but kept using the group, and keep adding new trusted people to the group. At any point in the future can the former group member leak his logfile to the oppressive regime. The oppressive regime can find the group ID, and invite themselves to the groupchat. Although they would get kicked out again, and see none of the messages, they did get a full list of current members of that group.

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