Is WhatsApp Free of Cyber Crime? Think Again!

If you're using an Android mobile phone, chances are that you're in regular touch with your dear ones through WhatsApp? So what's the big deal, you might ask? Well, it’s now a matter of concern and users must be very careful about the information they share on this instant messaging app - WhatsApp. No form of digital communication is entirely secure nowadays, including mobile chat applications. By using miscreant apps and a few scripts, anyone can steal your chats and can check what you talked about with anyone.

A Dutch Security Consultant found out that all the WhatsApp chat logs are saved in the phone's SD card which is easily accessible and readable by other apps because of the way Android allows sharing of data between apps.

Any database which is saved on an Android SD card can be read by any other Android application if the user allows it to access the SD card and this is not at all a big task because majority of users allow access to everything on their mobile devices by default. This information was shared  by Bas Bosschert in one of his blogs. Further Bas Bosschert explained the answer to "What do we need to steal someone's WhatsApp database? For this, he highlighted that we just need a place to store the database, and an Android application which uploads the WhatsApp database onto a website." 

Cyber Attacks a Major Threat to Businesses

An industry wide survey of technology and healthcare firms conducted by Silicon Valley Bank, exposed some noteworthy revelations and thought patterns in the corporate world. Almost half of the respondents in this survey unanimously thought of cyber attacks being the most serious threat to their data and business continuity. The research was based on responses from 216 professionals from different organizations.

A whopping 98 percent companies admitted to maintaining or even increasing their IT security resources. Almost half of them are planning to devote more resources this year to deal with online attacks. Another revelation that surfaced was that these resources are more likely to be invested in preventive policies rather than in preventive infrastructure. That means staffing security professionals, CEH Training in Ethical Hacking and monitoring is gaining higher importance than keeping the right infrastructure in place, indicating that they are planning for dealing with such attacks.

The main reason why this problem is being viewed as such a huge threat is because the possibility of enterprise operations being disrupted are magnified. With intellectual property of the organization at stake, close to 60 percent of respondents believed it to be a serious issue. Overall, it was deduced from this report that while many companies were confident of being able to secure their information assets in future, they were more concerned about the security measures taken by their crucial partners, vendors and distributors.

Companies are ready to take on attackers albeit they utilize the right resources that can effectively and efficiently safeguard the integrity and confidentiality of critical business information. Koenig Solutions offers various IT security courses for those who would like to build ammo against malicious intruders and hackers.