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WhatsApp voice calls were used to inject spyware on phones

ft.com

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Re: WhatsApp voice calls were used to inject spyware on phones

#301

Post by lol768 »

floatingatoll wrote: post #292
lol768 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AIUI, no. That package was added in Honeycomb (API level 12), whereas WhatsApp currently supports Gingerbread (API level 10). However, two API levels of compat. seems like a good trade to me in order to avoid an RCE.

How many millions of users would be excluded if they chose that path, and are their controlling shareholders okay with that reduction of active users?

I suspect we'll never know for sure, but we can guess. ~73% of users apparently use Android to access WhatsApp [1]. As of the start of 2018, WhatsApp had 1.3 billion monthly users [2].

Less than 0.3% of Android users globally use an incompatible API level. If we assume this applies equally to the WhatsApp userbase (and old-Android users are represented with the same proportion in the active monthly users figure) and use 0.3%, we have 2.8 million potentially impacted users. At the current rate of about 1M new users per day, it'd take two or three days for this small slice of the userbase to be replaced.

It would've been losing 0.0219% of their userbase to avoid an RCE that impacted 100%. Now, how much revenue did those users bring in? And how much has this announcement damaged facebook's share price?

[1] https://venturebeat.com/2015/08/27/three-quarters-of-whatsap...

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/31/whatsapp-hits-1-5-billion-...

Re: WhatsApp voice calls were used to inject spyware on phones

#302

Post by notlukesky »

zaro wrote: post #229
bjourne wrote: post #7

All my life I've thought spyware was developed primarily by evil Russian and Chinese hackers. But apparently also by Israeli developers with their government's blessing and open endorsement. That's some very shady stuff. Before someone says something about government surveillance of fiber cables. Yes, that is also bad, but exploiting vulnerabilities to install spyware on peoples phones... It crosses yet another line…

>All my life I've thought spyware was developed primarily by evil Russian and Chinese hackers. Yep, manufacturing of consent at play. But this aside, I have a friend who worked in Israeli company whose main business was to sell phone exploits and customer data by using the still very insecure SS7. Basically they were registered as voip operator, but according to my friend that was only a cover, and the real business…

Hey Zaro. The author of the FT article would love to have a chat with you and maybe get a quote for a follow-up article. His email is: mehul.srivastava@ft.com

Re: WhatsApp voice calls were used to inject spyware on phones

#303

Post by [deleted] »

Krasnol wrote: post #164
strictfp wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Story time. A close friend of mine was held in custody in the US based on false accusations by a police officer. The police officer later admitted the false accusations to the judge, that he just wanted to "scare him a bit". The judge nodded, proceeded to aquit him of all offenses exept the speeding ticket which he deserved, and off he went.

Yeah that's local corruption and still far away from what the Uigurs have to go through which is state policy.

[deleted]

Re: WhatsApp voice calls were used to inject spyware on phones

#304

Post by jtl999 »

jplayer01 wrote: post #195
jtl999 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Pixel 3 has a "Titan M" chip with much reduced attack surface compared to the TEE. Don't otherwise know much about it.

Still leaves 99,9999% of the Android market vulnerable.

I still agree that's an issue and I'm wondering if the Titan M chip is going to be a Google exclusive or if it's going to be licensed to other OEM's at some point.

Re: WhatsApp voice calls were used to inject spyware on phones

#305

Post by vxNsr »

Udik wrote: post #278
vxNsr wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like having snipers shooting at thousands of civilians, kids, journalists, paramedics, who are protesting inside their own borders. Ugh... this is so myopic and sounds like you're intentionally not telling the truth. all those "kids", "journalists", and "paramedics" were shown to be carrying bombs or other explosives.

Hm. All six thousand of them? Kids? Paramedics? Journalists? Do you have any sources for that?

I'd think the onus should be on you to prove that there were 6000 kid, paramedic and journalist deaths.

I'm not arguing that terrorists/soldiers/murders were killed, you are the one claiming that a reflective vest puts someone above the law.

On top of the 1000s of staged or edited photos/videos coming out of pallywood on a daily basis it's nearly impossible to take anyone making such claims seriously. as they are almost always full of misinformation/lies.

Re: WhatsApp voice calls were used to inject spyware on phones

#306

Post by edzillion »

wil421 wrote: post #275
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has killed millions of people in the last 15 years alone in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and a dozen other countries that we have bombed or invaded (including the 8 we are bombing right now). I'm under no illusions about the many despicable things done by the Russians and the Chinese, but its simply absurd to contend that their behavior has any worse than the United States. We have more of our citize…

The US has not killed millions of people in the last 15 years that is just a blatantly false statement. A quick search on Google or Wikipedia will refute your claim instantly. Can you provide a decent source for your millions of casualties claim or for you claim about the US toppling more Governments than Russia/China? I bet you can’t. Judging by your username I believe you know some things about history. Why spread…

Washington DC-based Physicians for Social Responsibility (PRS) released a landmark study concluding that the death toll from 10 years of the “War on Terror” since the 9/11 attacks is at least 1.3 million, and could be as high as 2 million.

https://www.psr.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/body-count.pd...

It's not that hard to believe surely? There have been plenty of other reports showing similar numbers.

Re: WhatsApp voice calls were used to inject spyware on phones

#307

Post by jonplackett »

floatingatoll wrote: post #258
jonplackett wrote: post #240

Isn’t this also a screw up by Apple? Isn’t Sandboxing supposed to prevent this from getting any worse than hacking the app itself?

Isn’t every article about this saying it persists, without saying how or whether it’s a sandbox escape? If it just spins up bad code in WhatsApp space, that’s sufficient to spy on you.

I'm sure I saw one say it infected the OS. I would like to know some more proper details too.

Re: WhatsApp voice calls were used to inject spyware on phones

#308

Post by Udik »

vxNsr wrote: post #305
Udik wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm. All six thousand of them? Kids? Paramedics? Journalists? Do you have any sources for that?

I'd think the onus should be on you to prove that there were 6000 kid, paramedic and journalist deaths. I'm not arguing that terrorists/soldiers/murders were killed, you are the one claiming that a reflective vest puts someone above the law. On top of the 1000s of staged or edited photos/videos coming out of pallywood on a daily basis it's nearly impossible to take anyone making such claims seriously. as they are alm…

> the onus should be on you to prove that there were 6000 kid, paramedic and journalist deaths

Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear. I didn't mean that all the people shot by snipers (not killed- just shot, usually in the legs and often causing permanent disabilities) were kids or paramedics or journalists. I was questioning your statement that "all ... were shown to be carrying bombs or other explosives". It's quite a categorical statement, and almost certainly wrong.

Re: WhatsApp voice calls were used to inject spyware on phones

#309

Post by oneluv1464 »

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Re: WhatsApp voice calls were used to inject spyware on phones

#310

Post by vxNsr »

Udik wrote: post #308
vxNsr wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd think the onus should be on you to prove that there were 6000 kid, paramedic and journalist deaths. I'm not arguing that terrorists/soldiers/murders were killed, you are the one claiming that a reflective vest puts someone above the law. On top of the 1000s of staged or edited photos/videos coming out of pallywood on a daily basis it's nearly impossible to take anyone making such claims seriously. as they are alm…

> the onus should be on you to prove that there were 6000 kid, paramedic and journalist deaths Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear. I didn't mean that all the people shot by snipers (not killed- just shot, usually in the legs and often causing permanent disabilities) were kids or paramedics or journalists. I was questioning your statement that "all ... were shown to be carrying bombs or other explosives". It's quite a catego…

Ok... so again, show that there were 6000 kids, paramedics and journalists who were shot...

Also your unbridled hate for all things jewish kinda outs you as a biased party.

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