{"id":487685,"date":"2023-04-14T10:43:11","date_gmt":"2023-04-14T08:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=487685"},"modified":"2023-04-14T10:47:06","modified_gmt":"2023-04-14T08:47:06","slug":"whatsapp-launching-three-security-features","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/487685-whatsapp-launching-three-security-features.html","title":{"rendered":"WhatsApp launching three security features"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Popular mobile instant messaging service WhatsApp is <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.whatsapp.com\/new-security-features-account-protect-device-verification-automatic-security-codes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>rolling out three new features<\/strong><\/a> in the coming months that promise to enhance user privacy and security.<\/p>\n<p>The first is called Account Protect, a new measure for double-checking whether a user wants to switch their account to a new device.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;From now on, we may ask you on your old device to verify that you want to take this step as an extra security check,&#8221; WhatsApp said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This feature can help alert you to an unauthorised attempt to move your account to another device.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The second new feature \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/engineering.fb.com\/2023\/04\/13\/security\/whatsapp-device-verification-protects-your-account\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Device Verification<\/strong><\/a> \u2014 seeks to protect users from mobile device malware while still allowing them to use their accounts.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;To help prevent this, we have added checks to help authenticate your account \u2014 with no action needed from you \u2014 and better protect you if your device is compromised,&#8221; WhatsApp said.<\/p>\n<p>The feature appears to be aimed primarily at unofficial WhatsApp clients that can push malware to devices for advanced account takeovers.<\/p>\n<p>Device Verification introduces three new parameters in message sending and receiving to prevent malware from stealing an account&#8217;s authentication key and connecting to the WhatsApp server from an external device.<\/p>\n<p>These parameters are as follows:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A security token that&#8217;s stored on the user&#8217;s device.<\/li>\n<li>A nonce is used to identify if a client is connecting to retrieve a message from the WhatsApp server.<\/li>\n<li>An authentication challenge that asynchronously pings the user&#8217;s device.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The final new feature is Automatic Security Codes, which improves upon WhatsApp&#8217;s existing security code verification system.<\/p>\n<p>Previously, security-conscious users have been able to ensure their chats are reaching the intended recipient by manually going to an encryption tab under a contact&#8217;s info.<\/p>\n<p>With the new <a href=\"https:\/\/engineering.fb.com\/2023\/04\/13\/security\/whatsapp-key-transparency\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Key Transparency process<\/strong><\/a>, users can automatically check that they have a secure connection.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When you click on the encryption tab, you&#8217;ll be able to verify right away that your personal conversation is secured,&#8221; WhatsApp said.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to the features above being introduced in the next few months, WhatsApp recommended that users turn on two existing features to enhance the security of their accounts \u2014 two-step verification and end-to-end encrypted backups.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Now read: <a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/software\/486525-whatsapp-working-on-big-security-change.html\" rel=\"bookmark\">WhatsApp working on big security change<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Popular online chat app WhatsApp is rolling out three new features to enhance user privacy and security over the coming months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":487695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[161,54803,73842,2594],"class_list":["post-487685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","tag-facebook","tag-messaging-apps","tag-meta-platforms","tag-whatsapp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487685"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487685"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":487721,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487685\/revisions\/487721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}