The phone numbers of over 3.5 billion WhatsApp users are at risk. Due to a major security vulnerability, users’ profile pictures, status, and ‘About’ section details could be leaked. Researchers at the University of Vienna have discovered this flaw. According to researchers, this flaw allows checking any number to determine if it is active on WhatsApp. Then, profile pictures, status, and ‘About’ section details can be easily extracted. These could be misused. Researchers explained: How scammers can exploit the bug Researchers stated that the problem lies in WhatsApp’s contact discovery feature. It was designed to make it easier to find people by syncing users’ phone address books, but inadvertently, it also opened the door to large-scale harvesting (theft) of user data. Researchers at the University of Vienna generated realistic phone numbers for 245 countries using the Libphonenumber tool. Then, they connected to WhatsApp’s XMPP protocol and sent queries. Numbers of India’s highest 749 million users at risk Researchers stated that out of 3.5 billion (350 crore) users, India had the highest number of accounts at 749 million (21.67%), followed by Indonesia with 235 million (6.81%), Brazil with 207 million (5.99%), America with 138 million (3.99%), and Russia with 133 million (3.84%). This includes 81% Android and 19% iOS users. Additionally, 9% are business accounts, which share more data through WhatsApp Business features. In regions like West Africa, 80% of profiles are public, where WhatsApp is used for messaging. WhatsApp flaw most affects 10 countries Source – Vienna University Research WhatsApp said – Research helped us WhatsApp VP of Engineering Nitin Gupta said, ‘Research helped test our anti-scraping measures. No misuse has been observed so far.’ Meta is now developing even stronger anti-scraping tools than before. Experts said – Privacy is now also the user’s responsibility Regarding this flaw, cybersecurity experts said to set profiles to private, not to put personal details in ‘About’, and to limit status sharing. If you are a business user, use the secure features of WhatsApp Business API. Such vulnerabilities will decrease in the future, but privacy is now also the user’s responsibility.
The post appeared first on .
The post appeared first on .
