WhatsApp’s instant messaging platform suffers from a flaw that allows message manipulation, and cybersecurity experts who have found a way to hack WhatsApp and manipulate messages said Facebook has failed to remedy defects, a year after alerting the social media network.

In August last year, they discovered new loopholes in which hackers could intercept and manipulate messages sent in private and group conversations, said researchers at Check Point. These vulnerabilities allow attackers to create and disseminate false information from sources that are supposed to be reliable.

Problems relate to using the quote feature in a group conversation to change the sender’s identity, even if that person is not a member of the group, modifying the text of another person’s reply, and sending an anonymous private message as a public message to everyone in another group, so that when the target individual replies, their message is visible to everyone In the conversation.

Speaking at the Black Hat Internet Security Conference, Oded Vanunu, head of product vulnerability research at the security firm, said Facebook blamed WhatsApp for defects that could not be solved because of the platform’s architecture.

Check Point said it has launched a tool that exploits the vulnerabilities in WhatsApp and allows users to implement manipulations to increase awareness of the issue.

Source : Check Point