The WhatsApp data breach is the largest of its kind ever, according to researchers at Checkpoint. The company says that half a billion user accounts have been compromised, including those from India.
The news comes after Facebook announced it had found evidence that some user passwords had been stolen in an attack on its systems. The company said it had reset the passwords of users whose accounts may have been affected by the password leak. Facebook did not say whether the attacks were related to the WhatsApp data breach or whether they occurred at the same time or separately.
New WhatsApp data breach
The Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp, which has over 1.5 billion users across the world, was hit with a new data breach that exposed users’ phone numbers, locations, and contact information to hackers. The company confirmed that hackers were able to access “some user accounts” through its servers and that it is investigating how they did so.
Facebook-owned WhatsApp is currently facing a crisis after its user base was hit with a mass takedown of fake accounts. As part of the cleanup effort, several people reported having found their personal information, including phone numbers and email addresses on websites where people had used their Google accounts to sign up for WhatsApp accounts. This means anyone who has registered under an old account password may have been affected by this latest breach as well.
According to reports from NBC News and The Wall Street Journal, there are at least five ways hackers could have gained access to ‘50 million users‘ personal information: A new WhatsApp data breach has been discovered, and it’s more serious than previous ones. The problem lies on the server side of the app, where the company stores user information.
A security researcher named “Gadgets 360” discovered an issue with WhatsApp’s server that exposed information about users of the app. The company is aware of the issue and is working to fix it as quickly as possible. However, at this time there are no estimates on how many users may have been affected by this breach.
Update: WhatsApp has confirmed the breach, and says it has already fixed the problem.
According to a report published by The Verge, WhatsApp has been breached by a third party, which had access to user information for more than two years. The company’s CEO said that to protect user data, they shut down its systems at 11 pm on Wednesday and have already fixed the problem.
WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, with over 500 million users worldwide. India is among their top markets with more than 100 million users. The company has been receiving criticism since last year when they were hacked by an unknown group that stole data from 50 lakhs (500 million) users from around the world including from India.
New WhatsApp Data Breach: 500 Million Users at Risk
The latest WhatsApp data breach, which reportedly affected up to 500 million users worldwide, is just the latest in a long line of security issues that have plagued the popular messaging app.
In 2017, The Guardian reported that a security flaw had been discovered in the app’s software that allowed hackers to access messages and contact lists for almost all users.
7 Comments