WhatsApp vulnerability exploited to infect phones with Israeli spyware [telecom]

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WhatsApp vulnerability exploited to infect phones with Israeli spyware

Attacks used app's call function. Targets didn't have to answer to be infected.

By Dan Goodin

Attackers have been exploiting a vulnerability in WhatsApp that allowed them to infect phones with advanced spyware made by Israeli developer NSO Group, the Financial Times reported on Monday, citing the company and a spyware technology dealer.

A representative of WhatsApp, which is used by 1.5 billion people, told Ars that company researchers discovered the vulnerability earlier this month while they were making security improvements. CVE-2019-3568, as the vulnerability has been indexed, is a buffer overflow vulner- ability in the WhatsApp VOIP stack that allows remote code execution when specially crafted series of SRTCP packets are sent to a target phone number, according to this advisory.