WhatsApp Fixes Bug That Let Hackers Take Over App When Answering a Video Call (zdnet.com) 11
WhatsApp developers have fixed a bug in the Android and iOS versions of the WhatsApp mobile app that allowed hackers to take over the application when users answered an incoming video call. From a report: Natalie Silvanovich, a security researcher with Google's Project Zero security research team, discovered the WhatsApp vulnerability at the end of August. She described the vulnerability as a "memory corruption bug in WhatsApp's non-WebRTC video conferencing implementation." "Heap corruption can occur when the WhatsApp mobile application receives a malformed RTP packet," Silvanovich said in a bug report. "This issue can occur when a WhatsApp user accepts a call from a malicious peer." It is unclear how popular the video feature is on WhatsApp, which is used by more than 1.2 billion users. But in July, the company said users were spending over two billion minutes on calls (including voice) each day.
G'Bye Landlines (Score:3)
There will be a day, not so long in the future, where people drop land lines completely, for a system that can not be spoofed, and that is encrypted end-to-end. AT&T and the like better pay attention or that business will end up in the trash heap of history.
--
Mr. Watson — Come here — I want to see you - Alexander Graham Bell
Re: (Score:2)
I find it amusing how many years AT&T and Bell promised us video phones and other vaporware, and extolled the virtues of caller ID etc. and never really delivered (since caller ID is now mostly spoofed junk calls) but WhatsApp and similar delivered. Obviously, the technology has caught up with the vision (necessarily since WhatsApp, Duo, and others actually work), so what about it AT&T, I might even ask them so WhatsApp with that?
Re: (Score:2)
It would be nice to see such a system that is open and standardised, though. Having everyone on WhatsApp would be... dangerous, to say the least!