WhatsApp Advises Users To Update The App Over A Potential Issue

After a huge security flaw is uncovered, WhatsApp is urging users all over the world to update the app to prevent being spied on.

The problem involves a video that when users share it, bad actors can gain access to their messages. The issue has been fixed, but users need to download the update to be protected.

CERT-In (short for India’s Computer Emergency Response Team) has issued an advisory pointing out the danger of the problem. This is done after the government of India announced that the flaw could allow bad actors to monitor and decrypt stored, generated, transmitted, and received by the devices of the country’s citizens.

Around a month ago, 19 Indian politicians, activists, and journalists reported that they had been targeted on WhatsApp. All over the world, there are approximately 1,400 accounts that receive a warning that they might have been spied on.

According to the message, WhatsApp put a stop to an advanced hacker that took advantage of the app’s video calling feature to infect users’ devices with malware. It also showed the recipient the measure they should take to protect themselves against this attempt,

However, WhatsApp said that this video exploit had nothing to do with the aforementioned data breach. And there has been no evidence surfacing suggesting that hackers have exploited the flaw.

The Facebook-owned company went on saying that these accounts fell victim to an Israel-based tech company called NSO Group.

A spokesperson of the company said that WhatsApp never stopped trying to improve the security level of the app. The company always made public reports of possible issues as well as applying the best measure possible to fix the problems.

In this particular case, the company does not believe that the flaw has been exploited.