WhatsApp contains a security vulnerability | the company does not intend to correct
The flaw would allow anyone with access to the WhatsApp server to invite themselves or invite someone into a group discussion. But the firm believes that the notification sent after such intrusion is enough to protect confidentiality.
We thought the messaging was completely secure. But German researchers have managed to identify a flaw in the WhatsApp group discussions, as reported by the US site Wired .
Thus, by taking control of the WhatsApp servers, a hacker can add a participant to a newsgroup without the consent of the administrator of that group. This lack of security makes it possible to access clear end-to-end encrypted conversations, messages that are supposed to be readable only by the people for whom they are intended.
What happens is that by inserting an additional participant into a conversation, he is given the encryption keys that allow him to access the conversation that follows his addition. In short, anyone who has access to the WhatsApp server (an individual working for the firm or a hacker) can invite himself into any newsgroup of the app.
The promise of WhatsApp is not completely guaranteed
Even if the intrusion of a new participant is notified to the other users and there is a priori unlikely for such a case to happen, this information seriously undermines WhatsApp's promise to fully protect the privacy of What would happen if tomorrow a government ordered the application to open the door for a discussion of activists?
For now, WhatsApp does not intend to fix the fault. Particularly difficult to exploit, it depends on the servers of the company, which is a subsidiary of Facebook. "Quit to imagine a system where everything is dependent on the server, as much go to the simplest and forget the end-to-end encryption," laments Wired in cryptography teacher Matthew Green.
In the meantime, WhatsApp probably remains one of the most secure applications since it offers encryption even in group discussions, which is far from being the case.