WhatsApp Security Flaw Means Your Messages May Not Actually Be Private

Users of the popular messaging platform WhatsApp — which was recently acquired by Facebook for $16 billion last month — may be facing a major security flaw.

According to security consultant Bas Bosschert (which first surfaced via the Hacker News message forum), it's possible for others to access your private WhatsApp chats

When you use the app's built-in back-up mechanism — let's say to prevent losing messages after uninstalling/reinstalling the app or moving them to a new device — WhatsApp is allegedly using the same encryption code to protect you and everyone else (instead of creating a unique key for each user) Read more...