Pegasus Snooping row: Why WhatsApp is at fault and not the Israeli firm

It was always going to be a matter of time, wasn’t it? With its not-so-great track record of users’ privacy and security, Facebook finds itself in the news for the wrong reasons yet again. This time, however, it is related to WhatsApp, its instant messaging platform. Facebook-owned WhatsApp has confirmed that smartphones running Android, iOS and even BlackBerry were attacked by a commercial spyware called Pegasus. This spyware had exploited a vulnerability in WhatsApp and took control of the victim’s phones simply through a missed WhatsApp voice call. Now, WhatsApp has always touted its end-to-end encryption feature as the beacon of security and user privacy. But what about any threat that might arise when you are actually not communicating with anyone? End-to-end encryption then goes right in the trash bin and becomes totally worthless. And that’s exactly what happened with the targets of Pegasus, who were simply sitting ducks as there is no way to prevent someone from calling you on WhatsApp. A couple of rings from different unknown numbers and the victim’s phone is infected with Pegasus.