WhatsApp: you will be amazed to see how many messaging security vulnerabilities exist

The exploitation of security breaches in the famous messaging application costs dizzying sums and it has even become a business in its own right.

The more smartphone technology advances, the more complex hacking has become. Previously quite accessible, the means that must now be deployed are much more expensive. In this context, it is not surprising to see that the hacking tactics of certain applications, such as WhatsApp for example, are exchanged for real mountains of money. The figures are truly staggering, since we are talking about several million euros here.

A very lucrative Russian market

There is a Russian company which has specialized in the purchase of “zero-days”. Zero-day vulnerabilities represent the sum of malfunctions and software flaws unknown to the developers of an application or service. They therefore allow potential cybercriminals to easily exploit them, since no solution exists to resolve them. Their value is therefore extremely high on the black market.

This same company therefore purchased a “chain of bugs” (a series of vulnerabilities that can be exploited in sequence to enable a successful cyberattack) for an astronomical amount: $20 million. This purchase notably allowed the remote compromise of devices running Android or IOS. A price which is understandable, because collaboration with Russian companies is not the easiest at the moment due to the international context.

The ultimate target: WhatsApp

The media TechCrunch had revealed very telling documents in 2021 about the value of WhatsApp zero-day vulnerabilities. A single flaw on Android could cost between 1.7 and 8 million dollars. Why are the flaws in this application so costly? Quite simply because it is possible to exploit them without having to compromise the target person’s entire phone. They only allow access to exchanges carried out in the chat.

This is why WhatsApp regularly finds itself in the crosshairs of hackers from government agencies. NSO Group for example (company blacklisted in the USA) was caught red-handed in 2019, while trying to use one of these famous flaws in the application.

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since the creation of the first computer worm in 1988, the “Morris worm”. Hacking has since become a gigantic market where the slightest piece of data can be monetized, like any other sector. The sums at stake for the WhatsApp application are truly staggering, and prove to what extent the financial and security issues are important in the current context.

Source : TechCrunch