In today’s era, WhatsApp has become a premium method of communication while other ways of talking to each other rather than physical conversation have gone old schooled. We are living in a world where the maximum business communication, as well as personal one-to-one chit-chats, are happening through the servers of WhatsApp because of their reach to everybody’s number.

In this article, we have elaborated on 5 Easy Methods by which your WhatsApp Messages can be compromised using some simple tricks and techniques. You may understand them one by one like the following:

1. Remote Code Execution via GIF

This particular hacking technique was first introduced in October 2019 when a number of security researchers found a vulnerability that was giving hackers full access to the app by utilizing a GIF image. The hack optimizes the method of WhatsApp by which it processes images when the user initiates the Gallery section to watch some media file to send.

It can send the entire chat history of the user to the hacker since it possesses some kind of encrypted code within the image. In addition, the attacker would be able to see the photos, videos, and chat history that the user had done with one’s contacts.

Thank God! This vulnerability was patched with the updated version of WhatsApp, hence, it is advisable for everyone whosoever uses the WhatsApp application to keep updating the WhatsApp with the latest version available.

2. The famous Pegasus Voice Call Attack

This call-based attack with the name of Pegasus came into force in early 2019 when it allowed the attackers to access a device just by positioning a WhatsApp voice call to their prey. Moreover, this attack was that much effective that it keep on being efficient even if the user didn’t answer the call, the corresponding malware still installs itself onto the victims’ device.

Isn’t it scary? I got goosebumps! The hacker in this attack installed an older and renowned specimen of spyware known as Pegasus which permits the hackers to gather the crucial and sensitive information of the target users such as phone calls, messages, photos, and videos. In addition, an ill-intentioned hacker can even switch on the camera and microphones of the user and take photos, videos, and recordings. When WhatsApp came to light of this attack, it patched it with the update and now your WhatsApp is secure with this.

3. Socially Engineered Attacks

This is the attack that has still not been patched by the WhatApp parent company Meta Platforms Inc. This is some form where WhatsApp is vulnerable by exploiting the human psychology to gather datasets or spreading wrong information.

In this type of attack, hacker could be able to post wrong comments that appear to be come from the authentic users with some real life potential in any genre of work such as Politicians, Business Persons, Athletes, Celebrities, and many more. i.e. They impersonate other people and send messages that appeared to be from the actual person in action. In addition, they even change the text of the comments they put in replies.

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4. Media File Jacking

This is an attack which affects both WhatsApp and Telegram where it takes the benefit of the methodology by the apps receive media files such as photos or videos and writes those files containing crucial as well as sensitive information to a device’s external storage.

Moreover, this can be done by installing a smooth looking harmless app which contain malware in encrypted format. Furthermore, it controls and reads the incoming media such as messages, photos, or videos, etc. in Telegram and WhatsApp. In addition, whenever a fresh data file comes, the malware swaps the real file with a fake one according to one’s intention.

Now this bug is resolved with the latest update of the WhatsApp App.

5. Your WhatsApp chats can be spied on by Facebook

Since Facebook is now the parent company of the WhatsApp application then it has changed some of the guidelines related to WhatsApp policies. However, with the help of an official blog post dated August 25, 2016, WhatsApp has cleared all the allegations put against it by various users and organizations that due to its end-to-end encryption, it is even impossible for Facebook to read media from the WhatsApp database.

According to a very famous developer Gregorio Zanon, this above-mentioned statement by the Facebook-owned mobile app is partially true. Mr. Zanon stated that WhatsApp’s all content is not end-to-end encrypted. On the contrary, on iOS operating systems with version 8 and above, apps can monitor media files in a “shared container”.

Both Facebook and WhatsApp utilize exactly the same “shared container” on their devices and with some technicalities, saying this could not be false that the Facebook app can actively copy info on WhatsApp present in both your and my smartphones. However, there is no such evidence on a concrete basis that Facebook has ever done this thing before. But, it can do whenever required.

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Conclusion

In the bottom line, we can add up that there are numerous attacking styles left to describe where a potential hacker could harm your WhatsApp database. In case, anyone wants to learn the WhatsApp Hacking pattern and methodologies associated with it, the same can enroll in our WhatsApp Hacking Course through Craw Cyber Security Institute at Saket and Laxmi Nagar locations. We can genuinely say that to avoid getting hacked by our WhatsApp database, we should always be on our feet for any suspicious activity which could take place while we are mostly unaware of the chances and certainly enjoying our relaxed moments because we sleep but hackers do not!