{"id":4167,"date":"2020-01-26T00:40:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-25T19:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/?p=4167"},"modified":"2020-02-26T00:43:17","modified_gmt":"2020-02-25T19:13:17","slug":"spyware-and-whatsapp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/spyware-and-whatsapp\/","title":{"rendered":"Spyware and WhatsApp"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">So one issue around privacy is that bad actors get access to your data through commercial or spurious routes. Manipulation through coercive commerce is real. And all the data gatherers are guilty of it.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>What about Governments tracking their opponents, activists and journalists raising their voices against whatever they believe is against the interest of the citizens? NSO an Israeli company was recently called out by WhatsApp for hacking into the app. This was done by \u201cremotely install(ing) surveillance software on phones and other devices using a major vulnerability in messaging app WhatsApp,\u201d reports BBC. So how did it work? \u2018attackers used WhatsApp&#8217;s voice calling function to ring a target&#8217;s device. Even if the call was not picked up, the surveillance software could be installed.\u201c Prof Alan Woodward from the University of Surrey quoted said it was a &#8220;pretty old-fashioned&#8221; method of attack. &#8221; A buffer overflow is where a program runs into memory it should not have access to&#8230; in which malicious code can potentially be run\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What\u2019sApp disclosed the attack but critical questions remain &#8211; does updating WhatsApp actually remove the Spyware? Jury is still out.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Where I learnt this #392 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>WhatsApp discovers &#8216;targeted&#8217; surveillance attack <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/technology-48262681\">https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/technology-48262681<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So one issue around privacy is that bad actors get access to your data through commercial or spurious routes. Manipulation through coercive commerce is real. And all the data gatherers are guilty of it.<\/p>\n<\/p><div class=\"more-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/spyware-and-whatsapp\/\" class=\"btn btn-small btn--dark btn-hover-shadow\"><span class=\"text\">Continue Reading<\/span><i class=\"seoicon-right-arrow\"><\/i><\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"ub_ctt_via":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,247],"tags":[70,180,248],"class_list":["post-4167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-what-i-learnt-today","category-privacy","tag-alwayslearning","tag-privacy","tag-whatsapp"],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Subhanjan Sarkar","author_link":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/author\/subhanjan\/"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paX7jg-15d","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}