WhatsApp Rushes to Fix Security Flaw Exposed in Hacking of Lawyer’s Phone
By Nicole Perlroth and
SAN FRANCISCO — An Israeli firm accused of supplying tools for spying on human-rights activists and journalists now faces claims that its technology can use a security hole in WhatsApp, the messaging app used by 1.5 billion people, to break into the digital communications of iPhone and Android phone users.
Security researchers said they had found so-called spyware — designed to take advantage of the WhatsApp flaw — that bears the characteristics of technology from the company, the NSO Group.
WhatsApp engineers worked around the clock to patch the vulnerability and released a patch on Monday. They encouraged customers to update their apps as quickly as possible.
“WhatsApp encourages people to upgrade to the latest version of our app, as well as keep their mobile operating system up to date, to protect against potential targeted exploits designed to compromise information stored on mobile devices,” the Facebook-owned company said in a statement.
The WhatsApp hole was used to target a London lawyer who has been involved in lawsuits that accuse NSO Group of providing tools to hack the phones of Omar Abdulaziz, a Saudi dissident in Canada; a Qatari citizen; and a group of Mexican journalists and activists, the researchers said. The researchers believe the list of targets could be much longer.
Digital attackers could use the vulnerability to insert malicious code and steal data from an Android phone or an iPhone simply by placing a WhatsApp call, even if the victim did not pick up the call. As WhatsApp’s engineers examined the vulnerability, they concluded that it was similar to other tools from the NSO Group, because of its digital footprint.
The lawyer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retribution, said he had grown suspicious that his phone had been hacked when he started missing WhatsApp video calls from Swedish telephone numbers at odd hours. The lawyer contacted Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, which has helped uncover the use of NSO Group products in attacks on journalists, dissidents and activists.
Ten days ago, as Citizen Lab was looking into the incident, engineers at WhatsApp discovered what they described as abnormal voice calling activity on their systems, said a WhatsApp employee familiar with the investig
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