CVSS Meta Temp Score | Current Exploit Price (≈) | CTI Interest Score |
---|---|---|
6.7 | $0-$5k | 0.00 |
A vulnerability was found in WhatsApp Messenger (Messaging Software) (affected version not known). It has been rated as critical. Affected by this issue is some unknown functionality of the component RC4 Encryption. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a missing encryption vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-311. The product does not encrypt sensitive or critical information before storage or transmission. Impacted is confidentiality, and integrity.
The weakness was presented 10/08/2013 by Thijs Alkemade with Adium as Piercing Through WhatsApp’s Encryption as not defined blog post (Website). The advisory is shared for download at blog.thijsalkema.de. The public release happened without coordination with the vendor. The exploitation is known to be difficult. The attack may be launched remotely. No form of authentication is required for exploitation. Technical details are unknown but a public exploit is available. The MITRE ATT&CK project declares the attack technique as T1600. The advisory points out:
As WhatsApp uses the same key for the incoming and the outgoing RC4 stream, we know that ciphertext byte i on the incoming stream xored with ciphertext byte i on the outgoing stream will be equal to xoring plaintext byte i on the incoming stream with plaintext byte i of the outgoing stream. By xoring this with either of the plaintext bytes, we can uncover the other byte.
A public exploit has been developed by Thijs Alkemade in Python and been published immediately after the advisory. The exploit is available at github.com. It is declared as proof-of-concept. The advisory illustrates:
The following is a Python script which can intercept messages to WhatsApp and which tries to decrypt the incoming messages by guessing all outgoing messages. It uses the WhatsApp library WhatsPoke for the FunXMPP parser. This does not work for the official WhatsApp client. It assumes the client logs in and sends only pings to the server. This was tested using yowsup-cli -l -d -c config -k from https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup. To use it with the official client, you would need to figure out which outgoing messages the real client sends and deal with the fact that they might contain data which is not as easy to predict, or even something more clever which can decrypt bytes in both streams using the other one.
There is no information about possible countermeasures known. It may be suggested to replace the affected object with an alternative product.
arstechnica.com is providing further details.
Product
Type
Name
License
CPE 2.3
CPE 2.2
CVSSv4
VulDB CVSS-B Score: 🔍VulDB CVSS-BT Score: 🔍
VulDB Vector: 🔍
VulDB Reliability: 🔍
CVSSv3
VulDB Meta Base Score: 7.4VulDB Meta Temp Score: 6.7
VulDB Base Score: 7.4
VulDB Temp Score: 6.7
VulDB Vector: 🔍
VulDB Reliability: 🔍
CVSSv2
AV | AC | Au | C | I | A |
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💳 | 💳 | 💳 | 💳 | 💳 | 💳 |
💳 | 💳 | 💳 | 💳 | 💳 | 💳 |
💳 | 💳 | 💳 | 💳 | 💳 | 💳 |
Vector | Complexity | Authentication | Confidentiality | Integrity | Availability |
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unlock | unlock | unlock | unlock | unlock | unlock |
unlock | unlock | unlock | unlock | unlock | unlock |
unlock | unlock | unlock | unlock | unlock | unlock |
VulDB Base Score: 🔍
VulDB Temp Score: 🔍
VulDB Reliability: 🔍
Exploiting
Class: Missing encryptionCWE: CWE-311 / CWE-310
ATT&CK: T1600
Local: No
Remote: Yes
Availability: 🔍
Access: Public
Status: Proof-of-Concept
Author: Thijs Alkemade
Programming Language: 🔍
Download: 🔍
Price Prediction: 🔍
Current Price Estimation: 🔍
0-Day | unlock | unlock | unlock | unlock |
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Today | unlock | unlock | unlock | unlock |
Threat Intelligence
Interest: 🔍Active Actors: 🔍
Active APT Groups: 🔍
Countermeasures
Recommended: no mitigation knownStatus: 🔍
0-Day Time: 🔍
Exploit Delay Time: 🔍
Timeline
10/08/2013 🔍10/08/2013 🔍
10/08/2013 🔍
10/09/2013 🔍
03/22/2019 🔍
Sources
Advisory: Piercing Through WhatsApp’s EncryptionResearcher: Thijs Alkemade
Organization: Adium
Status: Not defined
SecurityFocus: 62938 - WhatsApp Information Disclosure Weakness
OSVDB: 98320
scip Labs: https://www.scip.ch/en/?labs.20161013
Misc.: 🔍
Entry
Created: 10/09/2013 12:57Updated: 03/22/2019 15:13
Changes: 10/09/2013 12:57 (52), 03/22/2019 15:13 (6)
Complete: 🔍
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