Bug lets anyone bypass WhatsApp’s ‘View Once’ privacy feature
Reading Time: 2 minutesWhatsApp, the most popular end-to-end encrypted messaging app in the world with more than two billion users, allows users to exchange pictures and videos that disappear soon after opening.
But a bug in how WhatsApp implements its so-called ‘View Once’ feature in its browser-based web app allows any malicious recipient to display and save the picture and video, which should vanish immediately after being viewed.
The ‘View Once‘ feature is designed to work only on WhatsApp’s mobile apps on Android and iOS. WhatsApp rolled out the feature in 2021.
In typical circumstances, when a user receives a ‘View Once’ picture or video while using WhatsApp on the desktop app or on the web app, the user will see a warning that the picture or video can only be opened using WhatsApp on their phone.
As an added privacy protection, WhatsApp prevents users from taking screenshots or screen recordings of ‘View Once’ pictures and videos in its Android and iOS apps.
Tal Be’ery, a security researcher who has been researching WhatsApp privacy issues for several months, recently discovered the bug. On Monday, Be’ery published a blog post detailing his findings.
‘The only thing that is worse than no privacy, is a false sense of privacy in which users are led to believe some forms of communication are private when in fact they are not,’ said Be’ery, who is the CTO and co-founder of crypto wallet Zengo, in his blog post. ‘Currently, WhatsApp’s ‘View Once’ is a blunt form of false privacy and should either be thoroughly fixed or abandoned,’ wrote Be’ery.
Be’ery reported the bug to WhatsApp’s parent company Meta through its official bug bounty platform on August 26.
WhatsApp did not provide a timeline for when it plans to complete its updates to View Once.
Ref: techcrunch
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