How to secure your WhatsApp account from social hacking
0Reported today on The Verge
For the full article visit: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/23/21068815/whatsapp-two-factor-authentication-how-to-security-privacy-hacking-pin-backup
Reported today in The Verge.
How to secure your WhatsApp account from social hacking
Facebook's WhatsApp messaging service is incredibly easy to set up, but this easy setup process means that your account is open to abuse if you're not careful. Thankfully, it's fairly simple to enable an extra layer of security on your account, which means that you won't lose it if your six-digit activation code gets compromised.
These security options unfortunately won't stop you from a serious hack such as the one that hit Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. What it will do is offer another layer of protection if someone manages to trick you into sharing your security code, which is a process known as "social hacking."
If you need any convincing about why it's a good idea to use this extra security, then allow me to share a friend's recent experience about what can go wrong when you don't.
Bleary-eyed one Sunday morning, she received a WhatsApp message from a close friend that asked if she could forward over a six-digit code that she was just about to receive via SMS. Without thinking, and because she trusted her friend, she sent over the code and suddenly found herself logged out of her WhatsApp account.
You probably realized what happened. That wasn't just any six-digit code; it was the six-digit code that WhatsApp sends to your mobile number via SMS to associate with your WhatsApp account. In sharing that number, my friend had inadvertently allowed the attacker to log in to her account.
Since her attacker now had control of her account, they were then able to send messages from it to any contacts she was in the same group chat with. That's how the attacker was able to ask for my friend's six-digit verification code via another friend's number; they'd gained control of that account as well a