A recent cybersecurity report revealed a security vulnerability in WhatsApp and several digital services, most notably WhatsApp, that allows governments and security agencies to spy on conversation information, chat groups, and various types of interactions between users.

According to the report published on "The Intercept" website, this vulnerability may allow confidential information about all contacts of a user to be exposed, in addition to the identities of individuals in chat groups and those with whom phone calls are exchanged.

Assessing the level of security in service systems and networks

The WhatsApp information security team conducted an extensive security test to evaluate the level of security of the service’s systems and networks. During this test, the team discovered a vulnerability in the service's encryption system that allows security agencies and governments to bypass this system and access information related to user conversations without their knowledge.

The vulnerability also relies on a method of monitoring electronic networks known as "Traffic Analysis," which scans and monitors data traffic on the internet on a local scale targeting the residents of a specific country or region. The test document confirmed that WhatsApp is not the only platform affected by this vulnerability, but it did not disclose the names of other affected platforms.

The report explained that the vulnerability depends on the encrypted data traffic between Meta servers (the company that owns WhatsApp) and users' devices around the world. This vulnerability enables security and government entities to exploit it through an attack known as a "Correlation Attack," which focuses on tracking the size and movement of data to infer information from analyzing these signals.

The report provided an example illustrating that if a WhatsApp user sends a message within a group chat, a certain amount of data is sent from their phone to the phones and devices of all group participants, linking the user to that group.

The report also indicated that a correlation attack can be used to identify the geographical distance between two users by measuring the time it takes for exchanged messages to travel from the sender until they reach the recipient.

The analysis by the WhatsApp security team clarified that any government can know when someone is using the WhatsApp service since all interactions pass through the app's servers. A user’s identity can be determined by tracking their unique identification number (IP Address) that appears when users interact with any digital service via their internet-connected device.

This report highlights the importance of enhancing information security and privacy for users in light of the ongoing challenges faced by digital communication platforms.

The report also emphasized that the feasibility of such cyber attacks requires that all WhatsApp users in a group chat be located within the same country or in the same geographical area, which also applies to individual conversations involving only two people.

The WhatsApp team expressed concern about the Israeli government potentially using such types of attacks in an attempt to track Palestinians inside the Gaza Strip, relying on analyzing the metadata generated by app use from residents of the area, who number around 2.3 million, as part of a complex artificial intelligence system known as Lavender, which was revealed in an extensive report published by the +972 Israeli magazine last month.

Protecting WhatsApp from hacking - Archive photo

It is worth noting that Lavender is an advanced software system that uses sophisticated machine learning and artificial intelligence systems to collect and analyze a massive amount of digital data, most of which revolves around Palestinian activity online, to provide them with a rating on a scale from one to 100 points. The higher someone's evaluation points within Palestine according to this system, the greater the likelihood of being considered connected to the "Hamas" movement, at which point they become a target for Israeli military attacks.