WhatsApp announced a new Android update earlier today, and now an IT specialist claims your chat history could be exposed through other apps.
CTO of Double Think Bas Bosschert wrote a detailed blog post walking through how someone could access the WhatsApp database on Android, which contains your chat history.
The messaging app stores its database on your SD card, and any app that you’ve given permission to access your SD card can read it.
WhatsApp encrypts the database in newer versions, says Bosschert, but msgstore.db and wa.db contain older chats that are unencrypted.
Of course, even if an app was able to retrieve the latest encrypted database, there’s still the problem of decrypting it.
Unfortunately, Bosschert claims the WhatsApp database can be decrypted by using a simple python script.
“So, we can conclude that every application can read the WhatsApp database and it is also possible to read the chats from the encrypted databases. Facebook didn’t need to buy WhatsApp to read your chats.”
With the flaw now exposed, it looks like the WhatsApp team will be getting to work on another update sooner rather than later.
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