Malware-laced images may lead to hacking of WhatsApp and Telegram

Millions of WhatsApp and Telegram accounts could be at risk due to malicious files concealed in a faç ade of images or videos.

The vulnerability was uncovered last week by a research team from Check Point, a security firm, and they claimed the hackers can easily overtake the victim’ s account and access all their personal information such as conversations, contact lists, photos, videos and other shared media.

Since WhatsApp and Telegram use end-to-end encryption which protects privacy of its users, the messaging platforms cannot be aware of the content of the messages, hence the malicious messages can easy go unnoticed by the platform.

Both the applications lets only a certain type of files like images and videos to be uploaded, and also includes mechanisms checks to ensure that only those kinds of files get uploaded. But, the researchers at Check Point have found a way to bypass the verifications by uploading HTML files which can mimic images and videos that look attractive.

The team at Check Point had notified about the threat to both the platforms last week. WhatsApp and Telegram responded quickly and responsibly to deploy the mitigation against exploitation of this issue in all web clients. WhatsApp has updated their web service which has additional secure features and recommended its users to use the latest version.