Project Ghostbusters: Decrypting Snapchat traffic via Onavo
Mark Zuckerberg — CEO, Meta Platforms, Facebook F8 Keynote Address
“We believe deeply in user privacy, data security, and end-to-end encryption. Protecting our community’s data is the central priority across everything we build.”
Mark Zuckerberg to Javier Olivan — internal executive email, Internal email thread on Project Ghostbusters
“Whenever someone asks about Snapchat, the answer is that because their traffic is encrypted we have no analytics... Given how quickly they are growing, it seems important to figure out a new approach. Can we establish a kit using Onavo to decrypt their SSL traffic? You should figure out how to do this.”
The Split:While preaching end-to-end encryption and user data protection, Zuckerberg personally commissioned Project Ghostbusters—using Facebook’s Onavo VPN software to execute man-in-the-middle SSL decryption of Snapchat network traffic to spy on user interactions.
The more passionately a platform champions encryption to regulators, the more likely its growth engineering team operates a proxy kit to intercept competitors.