WhatsApp API flaw let researchers scrape 3.5 billion accounts
Researchers compiled a list of 3.5 billion WhatsApp mobile phone numbers and associated personal information by abusing a contact-discovery API that lacked rate limiting. [...]
Stay informed on the latest Facebook security updates and protect your personal data with expert analysis and tips on our Information Security tag.
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Background for this topic.
Facebook is a social networking platform for user profiles, messaging, groups, pages, and content sharing, delivered through web and mobile clients and interfaces for third-party applications. Its security relevance comes from concentrating identity, relationships, communications, and personal data in a connected account ecosystem; compromise can expose private content or enable impersonation and targeted social engineering.
Security coverage includes vulnerabilities in Facebook’s clients, APIs, authentication, and account-recovery workflows, along with abuse of messages, groups, applications, and advertising features to distribute phishing or malicious links. Practitioners should distinguish platform flaws from credential theft or fraudulent content, assessing advisories by affected component, exploitability, and required updates. Privacy controls and third-party permissions reduce exposure but do not replace unique credentials, multi-factor authentication, session review, and prompt reporting; investigations may also require platform logs and preserved account or message evidence.
Researchers compiled a list of 3.5 billion WhatsApp mobile phone numbers and associated personal information by abusing a contact-discovery API that lacked rate limiting. [...]
A new Android banking trojan named Sturnus can capture communication from end-to-end encrypted messaging platforms like Signal, WhatsApp, and Telegram, as well as take complete control of the device. [...]