An exploit in WhatsApp gives you the opportunity to learn the daily routine of users
In the most popular messenger app WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, was discovered a vulnerability that allows attackers to spy on users. The first such exploit found engineer Rob Heaton. According to him, almost anyone with a little technical knowledge and a spare laptop is able to exploit this vulnerability. It allows attackers to reveal the exact time, when you go to sleep and Wake up, and some other information.
WhatsApp has the ability to display the last time you were online, all users, people from your contacts list or to anyone. But as it turns out, is no way to disable the online status, which shows your activity in the service.
It would seem that these data can’t hurt, but after analyzing them, the attackers are able to know when you go to bed and get up in the morning. This information can take the advantage of the robbers.
To demonstrate the danger of this vulnerability Rob Heaton has created a Chrome extension that monitors and records online activity of its contacts in WhatsApp. This allows him to know when the man wakes up and goes to bed and how long he sleeps. If you were to draw comparative statistics from the entire contacts list, you can know who is communicating with whom.
Rob Heaton also stated that these data can be collected in droves, and then sold to third parties for advertising purposes. For example, people with poor sleep are great clients for manufacturers of sleeping pills.
Source: thenextweb.com
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