A number of well-respected security professionals have slammed the news agency Bloomberg for an op-ed it ran on Tuesday, claiming that WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption was a gimmick, after reports emerged that the app could be exploited by mobile spyware by merely calling the phone of a would-be victim.

The Federal Government's encryption law does not seem like smart politics, but then nothing about it seems particularly smart, according to developer Joshua Lund who works for the project developing the encrypted messaging app Signal.

Secure messaging applications that offer end-to-end encryption — like Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal — can leak users' confidential information through session hijacking because they depend on the operating system they are running on to protect application state and user information.