Sunday, August 31, 2014

How to setup pidgin WhatsApp using credential from Nokia n900

If you own a smart phone from Nokia, model n900, you are in luck to use WhatsApp
on your pc. The intention here is personal usage as sometime you ran out of
power in n900 whilst on a important conversation with friends. By setup up
whatsapp in pidgin messenger chatting software on linux, you can also save the
trouble of switch devices back and forth. This is intended for personal usage.

In this article, we are going to learn how to setup pidgin and so it can connect
to WhatsApp with the registration made in Nokia n900. Of cause, first, in n900,
you will need to install yappari, a whatsapp client for n900 and register yourself
an account in whatsapp. This article will not cover on how to install yappari
in n900 and getting an whatsapp account in yappari because it is very easy.

The official website of this plugin available here.  At the bottom of the site, there are several links to the operating system.

  • Windows/Linux: http://davidgf.net/nightly/whatsapp-purple/

  • Ubuntu/Debian: https://launchpad.net/~whatsapp-purple/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

  • Fedora: https://copr.fedoraproject.org/coprs/davidgf/whatsapp-purple/

  • ArchLinux: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/purple-whatsapp/


If you do not want to go through the hassle of setting up apt repository , what you can do quickly is by

  1. go to this link

  2. depending on what cpu architecture, if it is 64bit cpu, click on x64/ http://davidgf.net/nightly/whatsapp-purple/x64/

  3. pick the latest version, that is last-whatsapp.so and download to your computer.

  4. then with root access, copy the lib to pidgin plugin directory.
    # cp last-whatsapp.so /usr/lib/purple-2

  5. restart your pidgin.


At this moment of writing, I'm using last-whatsapp.so on the server with date of
this file is 31-Jul-2014 01:02 of 313075 bytes. Meanwhile for pidgin, the version
I'm using in debian is Pidgin 2.10.9 (libpurple 2.10.9) and this works very well for
me.

Once pidgin restarted, go to Manage Accounts and then click on Add button. This is
to add the WhatsApp account that you have setup in yappari. In the pop up Add Account
window, under protocol field, there should be a new protocol WhatsApp available in the
drop down selection. Pick that.

For Username and Password is very tricky here.
Username will be the phone number that you registered in yappari and as for password, you will need some work to retrieve from yappari configuration file in n900. But we will goes through this step by step.

Let's start with the easy one. The username field. It will be your country code follow by your mobile number without the prefix plus sign. For instance, if your mobile sim card is malaysian registered, it will be something like.

Username: 60123456789

Because the password which I'm gonna show you later will be a difficult one, I suggest you check the button Remember password. Unless you are paranoid, you can try to remember your password. Your choice.

For the field Local alias, it will be your name, just put anything that you like to identify yourself.

Now onto the password field, if you notice during registration, there is no procedure nor password sent to you. The only verification WhatsApp need is to identify this is a valid registration when you register an account. Note that WhatsApp code that sent to your phone is not your password.

I have been following the tutorial like using wireshark and tcpdump to get the password, see the attached screen below. This is just not possible because the traffic is encrypted using ssl.
12:07:45.317453 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 29179, offset 0, flags [DF], proto TCP (6), length 60)
192.168.0.82.62751 > 208.43.122.151-static.reverse.softlayer.com.https: Flags [S], cksum 0x938f (correct), seq 416925910, win 5840, options [mss 1460,sackOK,TS val 2996526 ecr 0,nop,wscale 4], length 0
0x0000: 4500 003c 71fb 4000 4006 bd03 c0a8 0052 E..<q.@.@......R
0x0010: d02b 7a97 f51f 01bb 18d9 c8d6 0000 0000 .+z.............
0x0020: a002 16d0 938f 0000 0204 05b4 0402 080a ................
0x0030: 002d b92e 0000 0000 0103 0304 .-..........
12:07:46.135812 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 54, id 37650, offset 0, flags [DF], proto TCP (6), length 60)
208.43.122.151-static.reverse.softlayer.com.https > 192.168.0.82.62751: Flags [S.], cksum 0xb738 (correct), seq 2641574608, ack 416925911, win 65535, options [mss 1452,nop,wscale 9,sackOK,TS val 3690413789 ecr 2996526], length 0
0x0000: 4500 003c 9312 4000 3606 a5ec d02b 7a97 E..<..@.6....+z.
0x0010: c0a8 0052 01bb f51f 9d73 3ad0 18d9 c8d7 ...R.....s:.....
0x0020: a012 ffff b738 0000 0204 05ac 0103 0309 .....8..........
0x0030: 0402 080a dbf7 3edd 002d b92e ......>..-..
12:07:46.136301 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 29180, offset 0, flags [DF], proto TCP (6), length 52)
192.168.0.82.62751 > 208.43.122.151-static.reverse.softlayer.com.https: Flags [.], cksum 0xe429 (correct), seq 1, ack 1, win 365, options [nop,nop,TS val 2996630 ecr 3690413789], length 0
0x0000: 4500 0034 71fc 4000 4006 bd0a c0a8 0052 E..4q.@.@......R
0x0010: d02b 7a97 f51f 01bb 18d9 c8d7 9d73 3ad1 .+z..........s:.
0x0020: 8010 016d e429 0000 0101 080a 002d b996 ...m.).......-



That's impossible to decode the traffic if you do not have good knowledge on ssl but that's the whole point of ssl encrypt the message in the transport. So retrieving password via sniffing on the network packet will not work. We will now go to n900 and retrieve the password.

  1. open a X terminal in n900. (if you do not have, you should install now)

  2. change directory to .config/scorpius and check your current directory should be /home/user/.config/scorpius
    $ cd .config/scorpius
    $ pwd
    /home/user/.config/scorpius 

  3. check current directory content with ls
    $ ls
    counters.conf yappari.conf yappari.log

  4. what is important is yappari.conf where it contain the password that is needed. so cat yappari.conf
    $ cat yappari.conf
    [General]
    whatsnew=555555555
    imsi=502121212121212
    registered=true
    number=123456789
    cc=60
    phonenumber=60123456789
    password="ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ/="
    username=JohnSmith
    creation=1407484663
    expiration=1439020663
    kind=free
    accountstatus=active
    lastsync=1407484676392
    status=Available
    lastimagedir=/home/user/MyDocs/DCIM
    nextchallenge="APAPAPAPAPAPAPAPAPAPAPAPAPAP"


You will see similar content as of above, and you should copy and paste the password to your pidgin. Note, because it is long, you might want to copy this file out and copy and paste it.


Fill in the password from step 4 into pidgin password field. Note that below is just an example of demonstration, you should replace your own value.


Password: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ/=





When you click the checkbox for 'Enabled' for your account, it should now connect.


WhatsApp has a smiley theme called emoji. So you might want to install that as WhatsApp users normally will send in emoji that pidgin will not able to decode and display as a rectangular box with hexadecimal. To install emoji for your what's app, you can follow these steps.



  1. read introduction at https://github.com/davidgfnet/whatsapp-purple/blob/master/README.md#how-do-i-get-graphical-whatsapp-smileys

  2. download the unicode-emoji and emoji-for-pidgin to your home directory.

  3. extract the zip files and copy the directory to your pidgin home.
    $ cp -R android apple symbola $HOME/.purple/smileys
    $ cp -R Emoji-for-Pidgin $HOME/.purple/smileys
    $ ls $HOME/.purple/smileys
    android apple Emoji-for-Pidgin symbola

  4. restart your pidgin and go to Tools -> Preferences -> Themes.

  5. under Smiley Theme, select the emoji you want. :)


That's it. Start sending WhatsApp message from your pc!




UPDATE 


If you have setup whatsapp on pidgin using this published article during the period on 31 August 2014 to 22 November 2014, you should really get the update again. Then in the setting for this whatsapp account in pidgin, under Advanced tab, in the resource field , change to Android-2.31.151-443. Restart pidgin and it should connect again.

1 comment:

  1. Excellent article for the lucky owners of this phone model. If you want to use this software on your PC, you need to install the desktop version https://yumdownload.com/pidgin. This will help you to correspond with your friends from different social networks. It is very convenient.

    ReplyDelete