Spyware scandal: Scary proof WhatsApp can give your secrets away – FT

EDINBURGH — Nine in every 10 South Africans are active users of WhatsApp. That might change soon as the news that WhatsApp is not a secure social media platform sinks in. A fascinating Financial Times of London report provides a glimpse into how devious groups linked to oppressive governments and criminals can exploit vulnerabilities to access information on smartphones – used by many as a mini-computer for banking and other dealings. WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, which has been lurching from one data privacy crisis to the next. – Jackie Cameron.By Thulasizwe Sithole.A vulnerability in the messaging app WhatsApp has allowed attackers to inject commercial Israeli spyware on to phones, reports the Financial Times. The company and a spyware technology dealer have confirmed the discovery. .WhatsApp, which is used by 1.5bn people worldwide, discovered in early May that attackers were able to install surveillance software on to both iPhones and Android phones by ringing up targets using the app's phone call function, reports the pink paper.."The malicious code, developed by the secretive Israeli company NSO Group, could be transmitted even if users did not answer their phones, and the calls often disappeared from call logs, said the spyware dealer, who was recently briefed on the WhatsApp hack..___STEADY_PAYWALL___."WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, is too early into its own investigations of the vulnerability to estimate how many phones were targeted using this method, said a person familiar with the issue.".The FT tells how NSO's flagship product is Pegasus, a program that can turn on a phone's microphone and camera, trawl through emails and messages and collect location data. NSO advertises its products to Middle Eastern and western intelligence agencies, and says Pegasus is intended for governments to fight terrorism and crime. ."NSO was recently valued at $1bn in a leveraged buyout that involved the UK private equity fund Novalpina Capital. In the past, human rights campaigners in the Middle East have received text messages over WhatsApp that contained links that would download Pegasus to their phones. ."WhatsApp said teams of engineers had worked around the clock in San Francisco and London to close the vulnerability. It began rolling out a fix to its servers on Friday last week, WhatsApp said, and issued a patch for customers on Monday," it continues..Read also: Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg suddenly 'cares' about your privacy.WhatsApp said in a statement: "This attack has all the hallmarks of a private company known to work with governments to deliver spyware that reportedly takes over the functions of mobile phone operating systems.We have briefed a number of human rights organisations to share the information we can, and to work with them to notify civil society.". WhatsApp disclosed the issue to the US Department of Justice last week, a person familiar with the matter told the FT – but the US authority is not commenting about the matter..Asked about the WhatsApp attacks, NSO told the FT it was investigating the issue. "Under no circumstances would NSO be involved in the operating or identifying of targets of its technology, which is solely operated by intelligence and law enforcement agencies," the company said. ."NSO would not, or could not, use its technology in its own right to target any person or organisation, including this individual [the UK lawyer]," it said of a hacking incident involving a UK lawyer, who declined to be identified. The lawyer has helped a group of Mexican journalists and government critics and a Saudi dissident living in Canada sue NSO in Israel, alleging that the company shares liability for any abuse of its software by clients. .John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab, is reported as saying the attack had failed. "We had a strong suspicion that the person's phone was being targeted, so we observed the suspected attack, and confirmed that it did not result in infection. We believe that the measures that WhatsApp put in place in the last several days prevented the attacks from being successful.".On Tuesday, NSO will also face a legal challenge to its ability to export its software, which is regulated by the Israeli ministry of defence, says the FT. ."Amnesty International, which identified an attempt to hack into the phone of one its researchers, is backing a group of Israeli citizens and civil rights group in a filing in Tel Aviv asking the defence ministry to cancel NSO's export licence," it continues.."NSO Group sells its products to governments who are known for outrageous human rights abuses, giving them the tools to track activists and critics. The attack on Amnesty International was the final straw," the FT quotes Danna Ingleton, deputy director of Amnesty Tech, as saying.

Spyware scandal: Scary proof WhatsApp can give your secrets away – FT

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