WhatsApp has not disclosed much about a major hack that took place earlier in the month and it is quite evident. A huge number of people are failing to update the app that is owned by Facebook. Hence, they are leaving the door open for bad actors to get their hands on personal information. Information that includes messages and data related to location. Research has been conducted by Wandera. It is a smartphone security company, which keeps a count of the likes of Rolex, Deloitte, General Electric and Bloomberg among their customers.
Wandera assists in securing the smartphones of employees at the above-mentioned companies. They have more than 1 million devices under their management. 30% of the devices have WhatsApp installed in them. This means that it can see if the users of 300,000 devices have taken the advice issued by Facebook. Hence they can make note if WhatsApp has been updated or not. This would take care of the vulnerability associated with security. Ultimately, it would help keep confidential information completely protected. One of the customers of Wandera had almost 5000 vulnerable devices on their books. The unidentified hackers gain access simply by exploiting a vulnerability present in WhatsApp call function. They manage to install surveillance technology, which has been developed by the NSO Group of Israel.
WhatsApp has issued a statement, wherein they have urged people to update their app. Facebook also stated that WhatsApp encourages people to update to the latest version of the app along with the mobile operating system. This would help protect against potential targeted exploits that are designed for compromising information, which is stored on mobile devices. The COO of Facebook is Sheryl Sandberg. She said that their investment towards safety and security did enable their engineers to find out the WhatsApp Hack.
