WhatsApp Flaw Opens Database Doors to Hackers
An Android developer's acknowledgment that it's possibleВ to drudge into the WhatsApp databaseВ and apprehend the argument of the chats from addition appliance could be a big cephalalgia for Facebook, which has agreed to acquirement the app for US$19 billion.
"This is not a bug, but a architecture accommodation of WhatsApp," Bas Bosschert, arch technology administrator ofВ Double Think, told LinuxInsider.
"They called for account in their design, not security," he continued. "I didn't accretion annihilation new -- I alone showed how humans could corruption this blemish with a alive affidavit of concept."
The blemish works if the database advancement adequacy is enabled, which it allegedly is by default, commenters on Bosschert's blog column said.
Although WhatsApp had encrypted its database in February, that encryption is accessible alone in new installations, and updates still use the old, unencrypted version, Bosschert remarked.
Facebook and WhatsApp did not acknowledge to our appeal to animadversion for this story.
How the Hack Works
The action seems aboveboard -- Bosschert created a PHP Software to abundance the database on a Web server, created an Eclipse activity with some added curve in the AndroidManifest.xml file, and affective the mststore.db and wa.db WhatsApp files, which are unencrypted.
His appliance displayed a simple loading awning during that action so users wouldn't apprehension their WhatsApp database was getting pilfered.
The drudge is accessible because the WhatsApp database acclimated to be accounting in SQLite3. Openssl allegedly aswell could be acclimated to drudge the database.
Although it appears WhatsApp encrypted the msgstore.db database application the .crypt utility, it's still accessible to apprehend chats from the encrypted database by creating a simple Python script, which converts it to a apparent SQLite 3 database.
Keeping Chats Safe
Bosschert acquired the database's AES key by application the WhatsAppВ Xtract toolpublished in the XDA Developers' Forum. That key no best works with the encrypted database, according to TiFlo Software, which claims its statistical app cracks the encryption.
"Given the attributes of the WhatsApp use model, with advancement enabled by default, you could altercate that the drudge is a key to a abundance abode of advice ... [but] I alone agnosticism it," Charles King, arch analyst atВ Pund-IT, told LinuxInsider.
"Given the admeasurement of WhatsApp's user abject and how accepted the app is a part of adolescent people, award annihilation of amount would acceptable be commensurable to analytic for a aggravate of broad-mindedness in agenda haystacks of teenaged trivia," King continued.
The Appulse on Facebook
The appulse of the drudge on Facebook's acquirement of WhatsApp acceptable will be basal at worst.
"It will yield something like the Target hack, area millions of humans absent their acclaim agenda information, to accept an appulse on the deal," Jim McGregor, architect and arch analyst atВ Tirias Research, told LinuxInsider.
"That will eventually appear as cyberbanking wallets and added applications emerge, but for now it's traveling to be addition of those 'there's addition issue, go fix it' things for Facebook, which is a aggregation that's accepted for administration user advice anyway."
Still, users "will be busted if WhatsApp doesn't anticipate of a backwards-compatible band-aid so absolute databases can be adapted to a defended implementation," Bosschert said.
Given that antagonism in the babble apps bazaar is agog and some WhatsApp users accept fled to added apps like Viber in the deathwatch of the Facebook purchase, conceivably the bearings should not be taken too lightly.
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