The maintenance of information security is becoming an increasingly serious proposition for enterprises.
Recently, Facebook’s instant messaging software, WhatsApp, which is known for its security, has been exposed to serious security vulnerabilities. Hackers can monitor users’ chat content and even tamper with it.
Check Point, Israel’s network information security company, found that hackers have three ways to change content. First, you can use the quote function of the group conversation to change the sender’s identity. This function is similar to @ in WeChat group chat, but The reply to a sentence; the second can change the reply content of other people; the third can disguise the one-to-one information as a group sending information, and send it to the group of individuals, and the user’s reply will be directly seen by all the people in the group.
Check Point’s three researchers Vanunu, Zaikin and Dikla Barda are studying the source code of WhatsApp in 2018. They developed a network testing tool to find the WhatsApp vulnerability, and found these three major hidden dangers without any surprise. They then contacted WhatsApp for a fix. However, the WhatsApp team only modified the third item.
Facebook responded by saying that they had carefully reviewed these issues a year ago, but the conclusion that WhatsApp has a security risk is wrong. Moreover, these studies will weaken the privacy of WhatsApp, such as affecting storage source information.
Currently, WhatsApp has 1.5 billion users in 180 countries around the world and has become an important information dissemination platform. Of course, it has also become a hotbed of fake news and crime. In India and Brazil, there have been cases of rumors circulating on WhatsApp leading to the death of innocent people. Moreover, many times, like WeChat, WhatsApp has become a tool for work communication. If business information is maliciously altered, it will have a significant impact on both the company and the individual.
Once, end-to-end chat software like WhatsApp and Telegram was known for its high security factor, but it’s now more frequent. The maintenance of information security is becoming an increasingly serious proposition for enterprises.