WhatsApp Chat Log Facing Security Issue: Here's What You Need to Know

By Prarthito
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Popular messaging service WhatsApp is easily one of the most popular and common apps that you will find spread all across a number of devices your friends or colleges carry around. And while that popularity has been astounding, the service is expected to grow more with the recent acquisition by Facebook.

 

And while all that sounds dandy with users expecting to get more out of the app with Facebook now taking the service under its wing, it seems like all is not well with the service and there might be some lingering issues related to data security.

 

Apparently, the service is facing several security vulnerabilities, one of which being the process of saving the logs of your conversations. And if you still don't think that it's that big a deal, go back a few months and read up on the security complaints involving NSA. Scared yet?

WhatsApp Chat Log Facing Security Issue: Here's What You Need to Know

The WhatsApp for Android client has been charged of being susceptible to malicious intrusion owing to the way conversations are both stored and encrypted, as discovered via a security expert. As revealed, the bug opens up the option of stored chats to be accessed via other apps.

And if you are thinking that this problem has nothing to do with the service's build and rather has to be blamed on how the Android is an open source which is open to all kinds of threats and attacks, apparently, the ease in which conversations can be gotten hold of and decrypted is something that doesn't wholly rest on the openness of the Android platform.

"The WhatsApp database is saved on the SD card which can be read by any Android application if the user allows it to access the SD card. And since majority of the people allows everything on their Android device, this is not much of a problem," the official bas.bosschert report says.

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But it has now become quite easy to actually get into the saved call log and check out what others are sharing with their friends or loved ones. And that's a major security breach by all standards.

Simple speaking, Redmond Pie describes the situation by stating that "WhatsApp keeps the conversations stored on a device's SD card, and, provided you allow other apps to access your SD card (many request it upon installation), an app could easily grab your conversations."

"It's worth pointing out that this is, if anything, an Android issue, and as such, WhatsApp is not the only app vulnerable. But since conversations hold potentially sensitive data - and WhatsApp saves these files on the SD card - the whole infrastructure is inherently flawed."

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Even though Android's build makes it easy for SD card data to be compromised, it's also worth noting that WhatsApp is not bound to store conversations in this way, and in the coming days we are hoping to see more secured interactions among users with the company taking the final stand against all these flaws.

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