ISLAMABAD – After the Bezoslinkcase,higher officials of the United Nations don’t consider WhatsApp a securemeans of communication.
For those who don’t know, Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos was allegedly hacked bySaudi Arabian crown prince Mohammed bin Salman who sent a malware-ladenvideo file to the CEO. Since both were engaged in a friendly exchange ofmessages, Bezos did not suspect anything of the sort.
Hence, under the current circumstances, a UN spokesperson said, “The UNdoes not consider WhatsApp a secure mechanism.”
When the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was asked about his exchangeof messages with heads of states over WhatsApp, one of the spokespersonsreplied,
Every senior UN official has been instructed to refrain from using WhatsAppfor official communication since it is not a secure medium. So, I do notthink the Secretary-General uses it.
He also clarified that the instructions to not use WhatsApp were circulatedin June 2019.
As a reply to all the hubbub around WhatsApp and its security issues, CarlWoog, WhatsApp’s Director of Communications said:
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Every private message is secured via end-to-end encryption to preventWhatsApp or unwanted third-party sources from viewing messages.
Our encryption technology, developed together with Signal, remains the bestto date and is highly regarded by security experts.
This ban on Facebook’s subsidiary has left security experts stunned.According to Oded Vanunu, Researcher at Tel Aviv-based security consultancyCheckpoint,
WhatsApp takes security seriously compared to other social media messagingplatforms. Every application has vulnerabilities that can be exploited insome way. Most run-of-the-mill messaging platforms can only dream of thekind of security measures taken by WhatsApp.
