The WhatsApp messaging application has been affected by a vulnerability in its image filter function, which it has already solved, but which left the door open for an attacker to access sensitive user information stored in the app’s memory. .
This has been warned by the cybersecurity company Check Point Research, which has discovered the security flaw, called CVE-2020-1910. The company assures that WhatsApp has already been informed and that the Facebook- owned company solved the problem immediately with a patch, so it is advisable that you have the app updated to the latest version to ensure that the error is corrected .
The vulnerability was rooted in the filter function image of WhatsApp , a process by which the pixels of the original image are modified to get some visual effects like blur or sharpness.
According to Check Point, this vulnerability allowed a cybercriminal to access sensitive information stored on WhatsApp when the application’s filter was applied to a photo and sent it .
During its research study, Check Point discovered that switching between various filters on elaborated GIF files caused the app to crash , and identified one of the crashes as a memory impairment .
For a cybercriminal to have been able to exploit this flaw, and thereby access sensitive information in the app’s memory, they would have to send an image treated with this type of filters, as explained by the cybersecurity company .
