WhatsApp group chat security flaw: Everything you need to know

Relax, nobody is going to be hacking your WhatsApp messages.

A lot of talk went down yesterday about a new way to exploit WhatsApp and bypass the end-to-end encryption the company likes to mention that it has. I've seen tweets and comments that run the gamut from "it's FUD" to talking about some backdoor that Facebook had installed.

The good news is that it's neither. In fact, you don't need to be concerned about it, and instead, it is one of those things that make you wonder how it ever happened in the first place. But don't worry — it will be fixed long before anything happens.

What it is

Researchers Paul Rösler, Christian Mainka, and Jörg Schwenk at Ruhr-Universität in Bochum, Germany released a research paper that found a peculiar flaw in WhatsApp's group chat administration. WhatsApp offers the same end-to-end encryption for group chats that it does for individual chats, and that usually means we should be able to feel safe in knowing that the things we say won't be read by anyone who shouldn't be reading it.

Apparently, it's theoretically possible for a stranger to add themselves to a group chat on WhatsApp.

WhatsApp offers group messaging that uses strong end-to-end encryption.

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