WhatsApp and Telegram security codes do not prevent piracy


WhatsApp and Telegram security codes do not prevent piracy



"Nothing more than sending an innocent photo, an attacker can take control of the account," says an investigator



A computer security company revealed that it had discovered an error in the popular messaging services Telegram and WhatsApp, which would allow hacking user accounts using the encryption system that supposedly protects the confidentiality of their messages.

The US company Check Point Software Technologies says in a statement that Telegram and WhatsApp, which alerted on March 8, fixed the problem. He did not specify, however, how many accounts could have been effectively compromised, but he assures that this failure represented a danger for "hundreds of millions" of users accessing the platforms from an Internet browser (as opposed to those who do so). through mobile applications proposed by the two services).

According to Check Point researchers, "nothing more than sending an innocent photo, an attacker can take control of the account, access the history of the messages, all the shared photos (in the service), and send messages instead of the users".

The pirate, in effect, could camouflage a virus in the image, which was activated when the recipient clicked on it. WhatsApp and Telegram use an encryption that guarantees that only the sender and the recipient of the messages can see its contents. But suddenly, the two applications had no way of detecting whether that content includes viruses. To remedy the problem, the two services validate more the content sent just before it is encrypted, which allows blocking the virus, adds Check Point.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

92% of Spaniards connect to the internet at least once a day

Autonomous boats will arrive in Europe in 2017

Artificial intelligence takes over the drones