With additional security shortcomings, WhatsApp faces a safety issue ahead


Among other social media, WhatsApp has been accepted as the widely used mobile application globally, currently claiming the number of users to be 400 million in India. Days were divine when it initially got launched into the market, but with rising population, its database and customer consumption has also intensified, validating it to be vulnerable to the users.

Every now and then, a message pops up in our WhatsApp window, keeping us hooked almost all throughout the day but what goes behind the process of exchanging information, no one knows!

Bloomberg reports recently found out that hackers can alter WhatsApp texts in more than one possible ways, citing Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point Software. It has claimed that hackers can control public and private conversations in a negative way, causing harm to the user’s identity and data. Out of three flaws being reported by WhatsApp, only one of them has been dealt with and fixed.

The Check Point team, till now, has been able to detect three modes of charging WhatsApp users, the first being the usage of a ‘quote’ feature , available in group chats, to change the appearance of the sender’s identity, while the second being to modify the text of someone else’s reply. The third flaw has been perceived to be the most unguarded one, thus exposing the responses to a private message to everyone in the WhatsApp groups.

Although, measures have been taken to resolve the third problem, however it is highly probable of messages being manipulated again, as said by Security Researchers at Check Point, in the annual Black Hat security conference that took place in Las Vegas.

Check Point even created a tool, which would curb the distorted information, rigged by hackers, from being circulated across WhatsApp. This tool mainly allowed decryption and spoofing of messages.

At the same time, such security bugs are usual in any type of software; thereupon being all-time active users of WhatsApp, we should be careful and alert enough to not fall under this trap. At the end of the day, identity is something, which shouldn’t be smacked with abusive elements or mocked upon. It is something very private and respectful in nature.