Telegram Green Pavel Durov warns WhatsApp users and urges them to switch to Telegram.
In a post on his Telegram channel, he called WhatsApp a “monitoring tool”. Two vulnerabilities were reported last week that allow third-party code to be executed through WhatsApp.
Vulnerability easily exploitable
Attackers only need to initiate a video chat with the victim or send an edited video file to exploit the flaw. Hackers should be able to gain full access to the victims’ devices.
patched the same gap multiple times
Durov writes:
Hackers can have full access (!) to everything on WhatsApp users’ phones.
This was made possible by a vulnerability that was announced by WhatsApp only last week. All a hacker had to do to take control of your phone was to send you a malicious video or initiate a video call with you on WhatsApp.
You’re probably thinking, “Yeah, but if I updated WhatsApp to the latest version, I sure would, right?”
not enough.
One such WhatsApp vulnerability was discovered in 2018 and another in 2020. And yes, before that in 2017. Before 2016 there was no encryption in WhatsApp.
