Description
WhatsApp on Thursday announced more security features that it will add in the coming months to give users additional layers of privacy and more control over their messages. It comes a day after the instant messaging platform launched its "Stay Safe with WhatsApp" campaign with user safety at its center. These are the new features announced by WhatsApp.1. Account Protection: If a user needs to switch their WhatsApp account to a new device, the platform will double check if it is the user who requested it. Therefore, WhatsApp may ask the user of the old device to check if they want to take the step as an additional security check. 2. Device Verification: The Meta-owned platform has released a security feature to prevent attackers from using malware on the device. The feature called "Device Verification" requires no additional actions or steps from users and is part of the app's broader work to improve user security against the growing threat of malware. When someone receives a message, the WhatsApp client gets the offline message from the server. This process cannot be spoofed by malware that steals the authentication key and attempts to send messages from outside the users' device.
'Device Verification' has three new perimeters, including a security token stored on the users device, none used to identify whether a client is logging in to retrieve a message from the WhatsApp server, and a challenge authentication used to do Asynchronously ping users. device. These three settings help prevent malware from stealing the authentication key and connecting to the WhatsApp server from outside the user's device. Automatic security code: WhatsApp has also launched a cryptographic security feature to automatically verify a secure connection based on the transparency of the key. Like device verification, this feature does not require any additional action or steps from users.
These key transparency solutions help reinforce the assurance that end-to-end encryption provides private personal messaging applications in a way that is transparent and accessible to all. WhatsApp is developing a new verifiable keystore based on an open source library. This will help WhatsApp clients to automatically validate the authenticity of a user's encryption key and allow anyone to verify audit evidence of directory accuracy.
