WhatsApp discloses six previously undisclosed flaws

WhatsApp addressed six previously undisclosed flaws in its app and disclosed them on a new dedicated security advisory site.

WhatsApp announced more transparency about the vulnerabilities affecting its app and will publicly disclose them to the users.

The company addressed six previously undisclosed flaws in its app and disclosed them on a new dedicated web site.

Some of the vulnerabilities were reported through the Facebook bug-bounty program, while the others were discovered during code reviews.

Some of the vulnerabilities recently patched by WhatsApp could be exploited by remote attackers.

One of the flaws, tracked as CVE-2020-1894, is a stack write overflow that can have allowed arbitrary code execution when playing a specially crafted push to talk message. The vulnerability affects WhatsApp for Android prior to v2.20.35, WhatsApp Business for Android prior to v2.20.20, WhatsApp for iPhone prior to v2.20.30, and WhatsApp Business for iPhone prior to v2.20.30.

Another flaw, tracked as CVE-2020-1891, is an out-of-bounds write on 32-bit devices. The bug affects WhatsApp for Android prior to v2.20.17, WhatsApp Business for Android prior to v2.20.7, WhatsApp for iPhone prior to v2.20.20, and WhatsApp Business for iPhone prior to v2.20.20.

The third flaw, tracked as CVE-2020-1890, is an URL-validation issue that could have caused the recipient of a sticker message containing deliberately malformed data to load an image from a sender-controlled URL without user interaction. The vulnerability affects Android versions of WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business for Android

The remaining bugs are:

A security feature bypass issue, tracked as CVE-2020-1889, that affects Desktop versions prior to v0.3.4932.
A buffer overflow, tracked as CVE-2020-1886, that resides in WhatsApp for Android prior to v2.20.11 and WhatsApp Business for Android prior to v2.20.2.
An input validation issue, tracked as CVE-2019-11928, that resides in Desktop versions prior to v0.3.4932.

The company revealed that five of the six flaws recently disclosed have been patched immediately after their discovery.

The sixth flaw was addressed in a few days after its disclosure.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, undisclosed flaws)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.