WhatsApp has been hacked with personal data on hundreds of millions of users put up for sale including 7.3M Australians.
But despite a hack attack on what was supposed to be one of the safest encryption apps in the world, the Federal Labor Government has failed to respond, despite slamming both Optus and Medibank for cyber security failures.
This is the same Government that has recently moved to fine Company executives whose databases are hacked.
According to CyberNews all up information on over 470 million users including mobile numbers has been exposed with 7,320,478 Australians now facing the real possibility that their mobile number along with confidential messaging information is compromised.
What’s App is owned by Meta who also own Facebook; the app is widely used by suppliers to retailers who communicate daily with overseas manufacturers.
WhatsApp is reported to have more than two billion monthly active users globally.
Credit: rafapress/Shutterstock.com
Upon request, the seller of WhatsApp’s database shared a sample of data with CyberNews researchers.
The stolen database is said to contain WhatsApp user data from 84 countries, information on 32 million US users and 7.3 Million Australians is now openly available on the dark web for a price.
WhatsApp is supposed to have end-to-end encryption, but despite this a hacker was able to gain access to the millions of WhatsApp users’ data.
In the past the app was described as one of the safest mobile messaging apps on all devices.
Now questions are being asked as to how Company executives in Australia can be held liable when one of the world’s largest technology Companies are unable to prevent criminals hacking into databases.
“Governments, businesses and other organisations have an obligation to protect Australians’ personal data, not to treat it as a commercial asset,” said Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus.
Dreyfus has failed to explain how an organisation can stop hackers getting into Company databases or what the benchmark is that will stop hackers getting personal information held by Companies such as Medibank.
The WhatsApp hackers even created a price list for the stolen personal information.
For example, the WhatsApp user database in the US sells for $7,000. The UK’s database is $2,500, and Germany’s is $2,000
Meta, the umbrella company of WhatsApp, has not yet made a statement.
It’s currently speculated that the WhatsApp data was obtained using web scraping or web harvesting, where an automated data tool is used to collect data from a specific service, which violates WhatsApp’s terms of service.
