- Sir Nick Clegg badly criticized for the WhatsApp security and for calling it unhackable
- Jeff Bezos, the amazon Chief’s account got hacked in 2018 through a malicious message on WhatsApp
- Cyber-security researchers clarified that security flaws were there in the WhatsApp’s software
Who is Sir Nick Clegg?
Sir Nicholas William Peter Clegg, also known as Sir Nick Clegg, is one of the former British politicians who served the position of Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for the period 2010 to 2015. He also served as the Leader of the Liberal Democrats for the period 2007 to 2015. At present, he is serving the role of Facebook’s Vice-President for Global Affairs and Communications.
Why Sir Nick in the news?
Facebook head for communications Sir Nick, needs to face criticism, and that is for denying the fact that Jeff Bezos, the Amazon boss data was hacked through WhatsApp. Well, he claimed what’s app messaging service, owned by the social media giant, could “not be hacked into,” and he said this while giving an interview to BBC. Mr. Bezos’ phone, which got hacked in May 2018, when he received one WhatsApp message that was loaded with malware. Sir Nick failed to acknowledge the security flaws in the WhatsApp app, which helped hackers in compromising the target’s smartphones. Learning about the remarks of Sir Nick, Kevin Beaumont the cyber-security researcher, made a joke and said: “Nobody tells Nick Clegg about how exploits work,”.
Source: https://flickr.com/photos/126489513@N02/
What happened after Mr. Bezos’ Phone got hacked?
An investigation that was done in this regard suggested that the phone secretly initiated the process of sharing a huge volume of data once he received the mentioned malicious message. Well, the US embassy of the nation clearly described this allegation as an absolute “absurd” one. When in conversation with the interviewer of BBC Radio 4’s Today program, Sir Nick stated: “It can’t have been anything when the message was sent in transit because that’s end-to-end encrypted on WhatsApp. “We’re as sure as you can be that the technology of end-to-end encryption cannot… be hacked into.”
What are cybersecurity researches saying in this regard?
The cyber-security researchers clarified that security flaws were there in the WhatsApp’s software, and that was previously discovered. In the year 2019, Two significant problems were disclosed. One allows hackers to remotely make the installation of the surveillance software right on the phones and that too with the initiation of the voice call, even if the recipient did not answer. Well, the other one is that it let surveillance tools get deployed with sending of malicious MP4 video clip to the recipient. Some of the key vulnerabilities present in WhatsApp allow hackers to install their malware without anything done by the recipient.
Afterward, Alex Stamos, the ex-chief security officer of Facebook, tweeted that nowhere it was so far proved that Mohammed bin Salman’s account was involved in this hack.
He further added that “Clegg is right that WhatsApp messages are end-to-end encrypted, he’s just applying that fact to the wrong issue… Nick needs some better staff briefings on this issue. Not reasonable to expect him to have this expertise.”
