WhatsApp Hackers Still Have Access To Huge Numbers Of Phones

We all know very well that earlier this week, the well-known instant messaging app, WhatsApp announced that the app had been hacked and the NSO Group of Israel could steal mobile data by simply making a call through the Pegasus spyware. Even the creator of the well-known and one of the most secure instant messaging apps, of course, Telegram took the opportunity to criticize that the company has introduced these vulnerabilities purposely as backdoors. However, the most used instant messaging app, WhatsApp patched the bug with its new version of the app launched this week, but here the fact is that still millions of users are vulnerable.

OMG! WhatsApp Hackers Still Have Access To Huge Numbers Of Phones

Earlier in this week, the well-known instant messaging app, WhatsApp announced that the app had been hacked and the NSO Group of Israel could steal mobile data by simply making a call through the Pegasus spyware.

Even the creator of the well-known and one of the most secure instant messaging apps, of course, Telegram took the opportunity to criticize that the company has introduced these vulnerabilities purposely as backdoors. However, the most used instant messaging app, WhatsApp patched the bug with its new version of the app launched this week, but here the fact is that still millions of users are vulnerable.

The WhatsApp hackers still have access to huge numbers of phones

The problem is that not everyone updates the WhatsApp application frequently, despite the fact that they are always updated alone without user interaction. This has been revealed by an investigation carried out by Wandera, a privately held company that develops mobile security solutions.

As we told that Wandera is a security company that manages the security of the mobile phones of companies like Rolex, Deloitte, General Electric, and has a database of one million mobile workers of these and other companies, of which 30% have installed WhatsApp.

With this, we have a fairly significant sample of 300,000 devices to see how many have the latest version of WhatsApp installed, and the figures are really scary. According to the result, 80.2% of the mobiles with iOS of that sample were not updated to recent versions, while in the case of Android, the figure is quite lower, down to 55.4% of devices that had not updated and remained vulnerable.

One of the company’s clients, whose name has not been revealed, has 5000 devices that are vulnerable to hacking and data theft, including many private ones related to the company itself. Any company that contracted the services of NSO Group could make use of the vulnerability and install the spyware developed by the company to steal the data simply by making a call, and it was not necessary to even take the call to be infected.

However, the fact is that the company has not notified its users directly in any of the cases, and all it has done has been to issue a press release. Neither on Twitter (with 2.7 million followers), nor on Facebook (with 31 million followers), neither on its blog nor on the Google Play Store, not even on the App Store as well.

I find WhatsApp’s description of their latest update hilarious. It’s all YAY STICKERS and leaves out “now it’s a bit harder for governments to spy on you using terrifying software”. Also: “secure”. #Pegasus pic.twitter.com/UTuhht1F6c

— lisa van wyk (@swimlittlefish) May 15, 2019

In fact, in the App Store, all they have put among the news is that the stickers are seen in the notifications. And it clearly shows that WhatsApp has very low respect to its users if it thinks that they prefer to update the app to see stickers in the notifications, instead of notifying all its users about the hack, so, that they can simply update their app now.

WhatsApp is currently working on having its own and verified channel, just like Telegram has, simply to deliver news, changelogs or any message they want to communicate to users. This would be an ideal method to inform users to update immediately, but currently, the app does not use any direct route to inform its users.

Now without wasting much time, what we should do immediately is update WhatsApp now simply to avoid hacking. As currently, it is almost impossible to know if you have been hacked or not, as if we receive a call, once the mobile has been hacked they can simply erase the notification and leave no trace. So, what do you think about this? SImply share all your views and thoughts in the comment section below. And if you liked this post then simply do not forget to share this post with your friends and family.