by determined snoops to intercept and read encrypted messages , it was claimedVulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerabilitytoday . Essentially , if an attacker can reroute a redelivered encrypted message , it is possible to decrypt the text . Facebook-owned WhatsApp stressesVulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerabilitythis is not a serious flaw nor a deliberate backdoor in its code . Users can detect and stop the surveillance , if it happens , by activating security notifications in the application 's settings . At the heart of the matter is the exchange of cryptographic keys when two people start chatting to each other : their public keys are sent through Facebook 's servers , and ideally the two people need to verify outside of WhatsApp that their keys have n't been tampered with during the handover . If it 's not possible to verify the keys , or there is n't an opportunity to verify the keys , you 're potentially open to man-in-the-middle surveillance . For example , a snooper could stop a WhatsApp message from being sent , take over the recipient 's phone number , trigger a public key exchange between the sender and the snooper 's handset that 's now using the recipient 's hijacked number , receive the redelivered text before the sender has a chance to verify the new public key , and decrypt the message they 're not supposed to read . This is non-trivial to exploit and rather easy to detect when it happens , rendering it pointless . The problem – which is `` endemic to public key cryptography '' – was raised in April last year , and at the time WhatsApp said it was n't a serious enough design flaw to spend time fixing . Now allegations that WhatsApp deliberate knackered its security have flared up again , this time reported in The Guardian . In response , the Facebook-owned messaging service said it designed its app to redeliver messages as described above to allow texts to be sent in parts of the world where people frequently swap devices and SIM cards . At WhatsApp , we ’ ve always believed that people ’ s conversations should be secure and private . Last year , we gave all our users a better level of security by making every message , photo , video , file and call end-to-end encrypted by default . As we introduce features like end-to-end encryption , we focus on keeping the product simple and take into consideration how it 's used every day around the world . In WhatsApp 's implementation of the Signal Protocol , we have a “ Show Security Notifications ” setting ( option under Settings > Account > Security ) that notifies you when a contact 's security code has changed . We know the most common reasons this happens are because someone has switched phones or reinstalled WhatsApp . This is because in many parts of the world , people frequently change devices and SIM cards . In these situations , we want to make sure people 's messages are delivered , not lost in transit . The alleged weakness in WhatsApp ’ s encryption system was documentedVulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerabilityby Tobias Boelter , a cryptography and security researcher at the University of California , and brandedVulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerabilitya `` backdoor '' today in The Grauniad . The paper fears governments can abuse the messenger app 's design , which is based on Open Whisper 's Signal protocol , to snoop on people 's conversations . Some infosec bods are critical of Facebook ’ s design decisions in rolling out its end-to-end encryption in WhatsApp . Neil Cook , chief security architect at Open-Xchange , commented : “ WhatsApp has already broken their promise not to share user data with Facebook , and now it seems that their promise of end-to-end encrypted messaging isn ’ t quite as secure as everyone had hoped , particularly given the involvement of Open Whisper Systems . It ’ s worth noting that this error in the encryption protocol is not present in Signal , so the team at WhatsApp have made the change intentionally ” . Matthew Aldridge , solutions architect at Webroot , added : “ This flaw allows Facebook/WhatsApp to intercept messages if they choose to , by having the sender ’ s software automatically flip across to a second encryption key . The functionality is designed to create a seamless user experience for users who have connectivity issues or drop offline for a time during a conversation , but it has resulted in a situation where it could be used to intercept messages by WhatsApp . For those sending highly sensitive messages , or simply looking to avoid this , you should switch on the key change warnings in settings , and always check that the two ticks appear after sending messages in an active conversation ” . Others fault Facebook for failing to respond quickly enough . Jacob Ginsberg , senior director at Echoworx , an expert in end-to-end messaging encryption , saidVulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability: “ The fact that Facebook has knownVulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerabilityabout this vulnerability since April is doubly damming . Not only could this be seen by many as supporting on-going government data collection interventions , it means their talk of encryption and privacy has been nothing more than lip service . The company needs to actively address its security measures ” . ® In a follow-up statement , WhatsApp deniedVulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerabilityaccusations that it had insertedVulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerabilitywhat amounted to a backdoor in its messaging code : The Guardian postedVulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerabilitya story this morning claimingVulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerabilitythat an intentional design decision in WhatsApp that prevents people from losing millions of messages is a “ backdoor ” allowing governments to force WhatsApp to decrypt message streams . WhatsApp does not give governments a “ backdoor ” into its systems and would fight any government request to create a backdoor . The design decision referenced in the Guardian story prevents millions of messages from being lost , and WhatsApp offers people security notifications to alert them to potential security risks . WhatsApp published a technical white paper on its encryption design , and has been transparent about the government requests it receives , publishing data about those requests in the Facebook Government Requests Report .
The Google Doc phishing scamAttack.Phishingthat conned over a million users this week illustrates how attackers cleverly respond to wider spreadAttack.Phishingend-user awareness about how phishing attacksAttack.Phishingwork . The attack did n't ask users to enter credentials . Instead , it exhibited very few traditional phishing scamAttack.Phishingbehaviors and could n't have been detected by endpoint protections . Some researchers are calling this attack a `` game changer '' that could be just the start of a new wave of attacks that take advantage of third-party authentication connections rampant in the cloud services-based economy . The attack trickedAttack.Phishingvictims into clicking a link that gave attackers access to their Google Drive through OAuth authentication connections commonly used by third-party applications . The attackers did so by sendingAttack.Phishingvictims lure messages claimingAttack.Phishingto contain links to a shared Google Doc . Instead of a legit document , the link actually initiates a process to give a phony app masquerading asAttack.Phishing`` Google Docs '' access to the user 's Google account . If the user is already logged into Google , the connection routes that app into an OAuth permissions page asking the user to `` Allow '' access to the user 's legitimate Google Drive . `` You are n't giving your Google credentials directly to the attacker . Rather , OAuth gives the attacker permissions to act on behalf of your account . You 're on the real Google permissions page . OAuth is a legitimate way to give third-party applications access to your account . The application name is 'Google Docs , ' which is fake but convincingAttack.Phishing, '' says Jordan Wright , R & D engineer for Duo Security . `` So unless you know that Google Docs wo n't ask for your permissions , there is little you could use to determine that this was fake . '' The lure emails appear to come fromAttack.PhishingGoogle Drive from a previous victim , making it difficult to detect as a fakeout , says Travis Smith , senior security researcher at Tripwire . `` Not only does this have a casual appearance of being legitimate , by being part of the official marketplace the link in the email went back directly to legitimate Google servers , '' says Smith . `` For those that are trained to validate the link before clicking on it , this passes two of the common techniques the majority of internet users are trained to not click on every link they comeAttack.Phishingacross : 'Does it come fromAttack.Phishingsomeone you trust and validate the link is going to a trusted source ? ' '' The only big tip-off is that many of the messages seem to have an suspicious account , hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh @ mailinator.com , cc 'd on the message , says John Bambenek , threat research manager at Fidelis Cybersecurity . He says the attack shows the glaring problem with OAuth , namely that it allows passive authentication . Netskope 's analysis found that a number of enterprise users across various industries ended up falling prey to this attack . Google worked to quickly block the attack , but there was a window of opportunity in that time between compromise and mitigation where emails , contacts , attachments and whatever else on a Google account could have been purloined , he warns . `` If an enterprise has identified that their users have granted access to the app in this attack , we recommend they conduct a full audit of the activities that were performed in Google Gmail after the permissions were granted to the app , '' Balupari writes .
A miscreant using the handle @ cyberzeist claimsVulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerabilityto have infiltrated Plone CMS used by FBI.gov , using a zero day flaw allegedly for sale on an unnamed dark web site . The Register has contacted the FBI to confirm the allegations . The agency was not immediately available for comment – although a staffer said they were aware of the alleged break-in . Cyberzeist claims to have conducted the hack last month and has posted to Twitter what they claim are screen captures showing the FBI patchingVulnerability-related.PatchVulnerabilityagainst the vulnerability , which appeared to permit public access . The hacker dumpedAttack.Databreachthe 155 purported stolen credentials to online clipboard pastebin , claimingVulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerabilitya vulnerability resides inVulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerabilitya Plone Python module . Cyberzeist also claimed the FBI contacted the hacker requesting a copy of the stolen credentials , which they declined to provide . The hacker reckoned the CMS was hosted on a virtual machine running a custom FreeBSD . They said they will tweet the zero day flaw once it is no longer for sale .