Hackers can spy on you by sending videos on WhatsApp

NEW DELHI: Soon after Facebook issued a crucial security warning for WhatsApp users, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) is advising citizens to update to the latest WhatsApp version immediately. This is because a new vulnerability has been discovered which might allow hackers to target someone by simply sending a malicious video file via WhatsApp.
The victim will receive an MP4 media file which is maliciously crafted on WhatsApp from an unknown sender and this is where the ‘hacking’ starts. The MP4 file will most likely play as any other video file but in the background the hacker can execute a malicious code to get access to the victim’s phone.
Explaining the technical details behind it, CERT-IN in its advisory said, “A stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability exists in WhatsApp due to improper parsing of elementary stream metadata of an MP4 file. A remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a specially crafted MP4 file to the target system.