WhatsApp, like many of the big operating systems and online services, has a rather serious problem recently discovered, because apparently, 2018 is the year in which security problems come to light everywhere. After we had problems with Intel processors, now we have problems with macOS, and there will certainly be other operating systems, or online services, that are affected by something, not just WhatsApp.
WhatsApp still has a very serious security problem discovered by researchers at the German University of Bochum, who say that the security of messages sent by users is compromised. According to these researchers, WhatsApp employees can intercept a major function of the platform and can add any kind of people to chat groups in the application.
WhatsApp can have the authentication process of group administrators intercepted by those who control company-owned servers, and thus any new members can be added to chat groups. Having any people added to the conversation groups, the people who want to monitor them, can do so without any restrictions, automatically retrieving all the information transmitted there.
WhatsApp - serious security problem discovered
WhatsApp is not only affected by the ability of unknown people to add unknown members to groups, but people exploiting the vulnerability can also prevent those people from being added to groups. Basically, unknown people can be added to WhatsApp chat groups without anyone else, except those doing it, knowing.
"The described weaknesses enable attacker A, who controls the WhatsApp server or can break the transport layer security, to take full control over a group. Entering the group however leaves traces since this operation is listed in the graphical user interface. The WhatsApp server can therefore use the fact that it can stealthily reorder and drop messages in the group. Thereby it can cache sent messages to the group, read their content first and decide in which order they are delivered to the members. Additionally the WhatsApp server can forward these messages to the members individually such that a subtly chosen combination of messages can help it to cover the traces."
WhatsApp investigated the findings made by the German researchers and stated that everything is in fact a non-problem, because messages adding people to groups could not be hidden. Separately, WhatsApp does not deny the existence of problems, but says that user security is a priority and that all conversations are encrypted, but it is clear that the situation is different.
WhatsApp is the largest text messaging platform on the planet, and vulnerabilities of this kind can affect millions of people, or maybe even more than that, without them actually knowing about the problem. WhatsApp does not seem willing to acknowledge its existence and it is hard to say if it will solve it, although it should do it as a priority instead of denying its existence and its effects on users.
WhatsApp was affected in 2017 by various security problems, and 2018 does not seem to be a better year for the messaging platform of the company owned by Facebook.
