WhatsApp recently enabled message encryption for its app where messages sent and received are encrypted end-to-end, meaning that technically hackers should not be able to read your messages even if they are intercepted. However since it would hard to say that anything is unhackable, we expect that maybe eventually someone could find a way.
But could that time be now? According to a report from Cybersecurity Ventures, it seems that John McAfee and his team are making the claim that they have managed to break WhatsApp’s encryption, meaning that messages that are supposed to be encrypted can now be read by the hackers as well.
However it should be pointed out that this vulnerability seems to only affect the Android version of WhatsApp. According to McAfee, he says that the problem does not lie with WhatsApp itself, but rather Google and the Android operating system. He claims that he and his team have discovered a “serious design flaw” that allows access to just about everything on Android devices, including encrypted WhatsApp messages.
It is unclear as to how real McAfee’s claims are as he is known to be a bit eccentric and has made pretty outlandish claims in the past. McAfee also states that he is looking forward to having an open dialogue with Google and WhatsApp to address the problem, and that he isn’t looking to collect a fee for his services.