Viber Contests Ability of Iran to Tap Communications

In September Iran newspaper Khabaronline claimed that Viber conversations can be monitored by Iranian government agencies. 

 

In the piece entitled “Are Viber and WhatsApp really monitored easily?” the paper quoted a “computer expert” named Mani Haghshenas who stated: “It is possible for users to use Internet networks that shut down certain security protocols and disallow Viber to encrypt messages, and, ultimately, a network such as Viber would prefer to switch to a normal message transmission mode, in order to avoid permanent nonoperation of its application for some of its users. The country’s filtering systems may sometimes block and disable the security and communication protection capabilities of an application, and in order to continue its operation, such applications may automatically have to provide their services to their users without encryption, and such circumstances would assist the governments to control and tap communications.” 

 

A Viber Company representative refuted these claims and told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that the application communications are encrypted and as such it is not possible for third parties to monitor messages. “All text messages sent through Viber on its supported platforms are encrypted. Media messages, such as photos and videos, are encrypted on Viber for iOS, Viber for Android, Viber for Windows 8 and Viber for Windows Phone 8.”