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Business News/ News / India/  Centre warns WhatsApp against any further breaches in security
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Centre warns WhatsApp against any further breaches in security

Government is said to have told the messaging platform that anymore breaches ‘will not be tolerated’
  • WhatsApp has asked for greater engagement with the govt amid promises of stringent steps
  • Photo: BloombergPremium
    Photo: Bloomberg

    NEW DELHI : The central government has asked Facebook-owned WhatsApp to strengthen security and prevent further breaches, after last month’s revelation that a security loophole in the messaging platform was used to spy on more than a hundred individuals in India.

    A parliamentary standing committee of the ministry of information technology and representatives of the Union home ministry met on Tuesday even as the investigations into the matter are on.

    Earlier this month, the Union government had asked WhatsApp to submit a report on allegations of the security breach.

    While WhatsApp has “written expressing regret," Computer Emergency Response Team-India (CERT-In) is examining the issue, a person, on anonymity.

    “The government is committed to security and safety of citizens" and the Centre “expects" WhatsApp to reinforce its security wall and anymore breaches “will not be tolerated", the person added. WhatsApp has asked for greater engagement with the government amid promises of more stringent security measures.

    Messages and e-mails to a WhatsApp spokesperson remained unanswered till press time.

    On Wednesday, the Centre also informed the Lok Sabha that it was “committed to protecting the fundamental rights of citizens, including the right to privacy," pointing out that “there were adequate provisions in the Information Technology (IT) Act to deal with hacking and spyware".

    Ravi Shankar Prasad, the minister of information technology, also said in a written response to the Lower House that the government was working on the Personal Data Protection Bill to safeguard the privacy of citizens. He added that the bill was also proposed to be tabled in Parliament.

    “The government has taken note of the fact that a spyware/malware affected some WhatsApp users. According to WhatsApp, this spyware was developed by an Israel-based company, NSO Group, and that it had developed and used the Pegasus spyware to attempt to reach mobile phones of a possible number of 1,400 users globally.

    The users include 121 people from India," Prasad told the Lok Sabha.

    The minister added that CERT-In had published a “vulnerability note on 17 May 2019 advising countermeasures to users regarding a vulnerability in WhatsApp. Subsequently, on 20 May 2019, WhatsApp reported an incident to CERT-In stating that WhatsApp had identified and promptly fixed a vulnerability that could enable an attacker to insert and execute code on mobile devices and that the vulnerability can no longer be exploited to carry out attacks."

    On 5 September, however, Prasad noted, WhatsApp wrote to CERT-In mentioning an update to the security incident reported in May 2019, that “while the full extent of this attack may never be known, WhatsApp continued to review the available information".

    At least two dozen Indian journalists, activists, lawyers and academics were targeted for surveillance. The Indian breach was reported after WhatsApp sued NSO Group, accusing it of helping break into the phones of 1,400 users across four continents in a hacking spree whose targets included diplomats, political dissidents, journalists and senior government officials.

    Saumya Tewari contributed to this story.

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    Published: 20 Nov 2019, 08:12 PM IST
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