Does the social media company Facebook have access to all the highly personal messages sent by billions of people around the world on the WhatsApp app?
In an interview with the British Guardian, the young German researcher, Tobias Boulter, said that the company installed a backdoor exploit in the application, giving it access to all content transmitted through it - even though Facebook and WhatsApp have always vehemently claimed otherwise.
Bolter, whose words were quoted in 'Nana10', said that at first he thought it was a bug or some kind of loophole, but the deeper he delved into his investigation, the more he realized it was a deliberate backdoor.
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Facebook has repeatedly emphasized for years how secure WhatsApp is and that no party, not even the company itself, has access to users' correspondence.
Now it turns out that Facebook has left itself the ability to intercept and read users' messages, without them even knowing about it.
Not working on the matter
Over a billion people - according to data from February 2016 - use the WhatsApp application, and last April the company launched an encryption upgrade accompanied by major media publicity.
According to Boulter, he contacted Facebook in April 2016 and reported the matter to them in what is known as a "whitehat report" as part of a code of ethics in which "good" hackers who uncover security breaches notify the hacker.
However, Facebook claimed, in a message he received a month and a half later on 05/25, that this was "expected behavior" and that there was no problem here.
Bolter replied to the company that "it is unacceptable that this would be the expected behavior" - and then received the following response on 05/31: "We are aware of the matter... for now, it is not something we are working to change.".
