WhatsApp Says New MP4 File Bug Does Not Affect User or Their Data

The specially crafted MP4 file triggers the remote code execution (RCE) and denial of service (DoS) cyber attack.

Representational image.

(Photo: iStock)

WhatsApp on Monday said no user data was affected owing to a new bug where a specially-crafted malicious MP4 file may have used the vulnerability to trigger the remote code execution (RCE) and denial of service (DoS) cyber attack when downloaded by a user on both Android and iOS devices.

Reports on Sunday claimed that hackers can use the WhatsApp vulnerability to deploy the malware on the user's device to steal sensitive files and snoop on them. "The vulnerability is classified as 'Critical' severity that affected an unknown code block of the component MP4 File Handler in WhatsApp," reported gbhackers.com on Saturday, 16 November.

The same way Israeli software Pegasus developed by cyber intelligence company NSO Group did, by exploiting the video calling system in the Facebook-owned to snoop on 1,400 selected users globally and in India, including human rights activists and journalists.

“WhatsApp is constantly working to improve the security of our service. We make public, reports on potential issues we have fixed consistent with industry-best practices. In this instance, there is no reason to believe users were impacted,” WhatsApp spokesperson in a statement shared with IANS.

The social messaging platform has already issued a security update on this bug.

"The issue was present in parsing the elementary stream metadata of an MP4 file and could result in a DoS or RCE," it said.

Facebook had earlier issued an advisory, saying "a stack-based buffer overflow could be triggered in WhatsApp by sending a specially-crafted MP4 file to a WhatsApp user."

“The RCE vulnerability allows hackers to perform the attack remotely without any sort of authentication,” claimed the report.

The critical WhatsApp vulnerability can be tracked as CVE-2019-11931, and notified few days back.