The most used messaging application in the world, WhatsApp, faced a problem at the end of the year that put the security of the data transmitted through the application at risk and which shows that even end-to-end encryption is not completely secure. This problem was solved with the update that WhatsApp released at the beginning of the year.
Check Point Research, a security company dHe discovered this vulnerability and reported it to WhatsApp on November 10, 2020. With the release of WhatsApp version 2.21.1.13, the company solved this problem that required user interaction.
According to the guys at Check Point Research, the hacker had to send an image through the application. This picture it contained a code that was executed when the user who received it applied a filter WhatsApp and forwarded it, with the added filter, to whoever had sent it. At that point, a memory failure occurred and user data was exposed to the attacker.
WhatsApp thanked Check Point Research for reporting the vulnerability, stating that the end-to-end encryption that this platform uses, it is still completely safe. He also stated that security companies are very important for exploits of applications or operating systems to be used for malicious purposes.
If this vulnerability had been detected by other people, most likely it would have been sold on the black market (where they pay really well) so that friends of others could take advantage of it, although, as we have seen, by requiring user interaction, it did not have much chance of becoming functional
