WhatsApp says it moved fast to contain spyware attack damage

WhatsApp told the Indian government that it moved quickly to fix the vulnerability that allowed a spyware attack on users’ phones besides taking action against 4 million accounts to curb abuse of the platform during the general election.

“While no safety programme including ours is perfect and we must constantly improve… we are committed to doing all we can to prevent these abuses to our systems,” the Facebook-owned company said in its response to the government. ET has seen the communication.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had asked WhatsApp for details on the spyware hack that allowed perpetrators to snoop on users and what remedial action it had taken.