How to Avoid WhatsApp Android Bug in your Smart Phone?

admin Jun 19, 2020Jun 25, 2020 0 Comments

Can you even think of spending a day without paying any attention to your WhatsApp?

No Way Dude!

Be it a client meeting or about informing important information with your colleagues, what’s App is the fastest medium of communication among all the social media platforms around us. Be it about wishing your closed ones ‘Good morning’ text, informing something to your friends or family members, WhatsApp is your only minion.

But, if you come across any unknown push notification in WhatsApp and post to a mistaken click on it if you see your confidential messages are compromising with unknown third-party sources.

Ways to Avoid WhatsApp Android Bug

What will you do next?

That’s why it’s high time for you to know about WhatsApp android app bugs, which have already become a convenient medium for hackers to access your files these days.

Really, Jeez’!

From the last few months, a number of WhatsApp users have complained that their credential messages and important files have fallen in the wrong hands. Some ended up seeing their mail ID’s being used by the third-party without their consent.

Some even lost a significant amount of highly confidential data from their phones. So definitely you can understand how vulnerable the WhatsApp android bugs are!

What is WhatsApp android App Bug?

What’s this WhatsApp android app bug that easily hacks your internal files and docs in your phone?

According to Hacker News, malicious hackers are using app-based technology in WhatsApp to steal potential information from targeted devices. Apart from getting silent access to compromise with secured chat messages, this vulnerable app launches remote code execution attacks in smartphones.

The instant results of one such silent attack in smartphones are,

Leakage of secured potentially confidential chat messages
Installation of malicious backdoor or spyware app
Malicious app silently recording your access and passing over the information to potential hackers in no time

At the end of the day, the user ends up losing some of his/her potential information to those hackers without their knowledge itself.

Apple phones are not Spare from What’s App Bug Attack

Iphones were once reliable to the users prior to its reliability factors. There was a conception amongst Apple users that, WhatsApp bugs can’t enable hackers to find its way through Iphones!

Well, it’s a myth now.

It has been seen that the vulnerable app affected multiple smartphones operating systems like Google, Android, Apple, iOS, Microsoft Windows, etc.

In a recent article published by Facebook, it was informed that WhatsApp bug has affected some of the following versions like:

Android version (before 2.19.274)
iOS version (before 2.19.100)
Windows Phone version (before 2.18.368)
Enterprise Client versions (before 2.25.3)
Business for android versions (before 2.19.104)
Business for iOS versions before (2.19.100)

According to the NSO group of Israeli companies, this has been identifying that the vulnerability of the app targets near about 1400 android and iOS devices all over the world.

How does CVE-2019-11931 can Compromise with WhatsApp Phone Security?

It has been seen that the smartphones having WhatsApp versions below 2.19.244 are the primary target of these bugs. A double-free bug-like CVE-2019-11932 uses one such loophole to trespass in a user’s phone.

Maximum reports came that the app bug has installed in the form of GIF in the phone. Once it’s installed the users have always found some way or the other their potential information has been compromised with third-party sources. That’s one of the reasons why the users are well informed to avoid replying or clicking unknown GIFs whenever it comes to android phones.

If you’re facing any such GIF video from unknown sources, straightaway deleting the video will always be a smart initiative from your side.

Maximum people get victimize to one such threat because the bug app follows an MPE4 video format. Most of the users click it often unknowingly that they’re downloading a malicious malware in their phones.

The Strategy of the Malware to Pawn the Information in a Smartphone

According to a recent technical write-up shown in Github, we can say that the malware usually gets triggers in two ways.

First Way

It targets an android device first and then installs a malicious application in it. After that, it generates a GIF file that looks pretty similar to any common GIF video. So that the user can’t doubt it as malware. The moment a user shows interest in downloading the software, paranoid activities start on your smartphone!

Sometimes, it may steal confidential data installed in your phone. At times, it might randomly hunt down the file storage where personalized data and other vital information remain stored. At times it may even silently record the personalized data and pass it over the hackers.

Second Way

The second strategy of the spyware is, it uses GIF payload in WhatsApp as an attachment through other channels. When the user opens the gallery view in the messaging and chatting application, the accuse GIF file gets parses two times. After it opens a remote shell pre-installed in-app. That leads to a successful RCE in smartphones and the phone becomes a breeding ground for multiple third-party sources.

So, by now it must be easy for the readers to evaluate the vulnerability of one such app if it ever gets install in a smartphone.

How to Avoid This Threat in Your Smartphones?

The first and foremost thing you need to do is check the current version of WhatsApp installed in the phone. According to security researchers, it has been said that since Facebook has taken WhatsApp now. The current WhatsApp version 2.19.244 has evaded such threats suitably.

If the current version of your WhatsApp is not 2.19.244, it’s time for you to update your WhatsApp version. Recently a senior spokesperson from WhatsApp retorted about the issue. The issue is much prone to affect the user who’s sending one such GIF. It has a high chance of affecting the sender’s device.

However, after using the new version of WhatsApp no report has been issued or claimed until now from the user’s side.