The most popular mobile messaging platform, WhatsApp, that was recently acquired by Facebook for $19bn may now possibly be "hacked into", according to a disclosure by Bas Bosschert, chief technology officer of Double Think. He presented a proof of concept how WhatsApp's secure servers could be penetrated but provided some relief by adding that there is no reason to believe that the WhatsApp vault has already been hacked into. This could be a worrying sign for Facebook, who spent big in its acquisition of WhatsApp. Bas also said that the reason behind this could be that WhatsApp chose to focus on usability, rather than security, hence providing a better, yet potentially less safer experience. Details of the flaw included the database backup feature of WhatsApp, where chats are automatically backed up on it's servers. WhatsApp enabled encryption of its databases earlier this year in February but the encryption feature is present only in "new" installations, not older versions where the unencrypted database is used.
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