Researchers at Check Point have found that there are about three different vulnerabilities in WhatsApp that could help users spread fake news to others. According to Check Point, these vulnerabilities allow for “a threat actor to intercept and manipulate messages sent by those in a group or private conversation.” This would allow the attacker to create and spread misinformation or fake news.
There are three vulnerabilities that were found, which include: Changing a reply from someone, Quoting a message in a reply to a group conversation, and sending a message to a member of a group that pretends to be a group message but it’s only sent to one member and not the entire group. Now these are all pretty simple things that WhatsApp can fix pretty easily. But it essentially means that people could change message contents and also send them to other groups or even individuals. Check Points head of product vulnerability research, Oded Vanunu stated that “Given WhatsApp’s prevalence among consumers, businesses and government agencies, it’s no surprise that hackers see the application as a five-star opportunity for potential scams. As one of the main communication channels available today, WhatsApp is used for sensitive conversations ranging from confidential corporate and government information to criminal intelligence that could be used in a court of law.”
WhatsApp is a very popular messaging app, in fact it’s so popular that Facebook bought it. In fact, it is the largest messaging app out there right now, though it does have some stiff competition from Line, Telegram and even WeChat. That’s why it is super important that WhatsApp fixes these vulnerabilities so that users aren’t able to spread misinformation here. In fact the vulnerability where someone can send a message to directly you, even though it’s in a group conversation, could be the biggest issue of all here. As many may think that this was sent to everyone, but it was not. So far, WhatsApp has not said a word about these vulnerabilities, but expect that to change soon.
