German Police Accesses People’s WhatsApp Message

German Police Accesses People’s WhatsApp Message
Short Title	German Police Accesses People’s WhatsApp Message through Its Web Function Without Any Malware
Location	Germany
Date	July 2020
Solove Harm	Insecurity, Surveillance
Information	Identifying, Communication, Authenticating, Physical Characteristics, Behavioral, Computer Device
Threat Actors	German Federal Criminal Agency, WhatsApp Inc. (Facebook Inc.), Facebook, Law Enforcement
Individuals
Affected	WhatsApp users
High Risk Groups	Suspect
Tangible Harms

German media has reported that the German Federal Criminal Agency (Bundeskriminalamt or BKA) can access WhatsApp users’ messages without the help of any malware.

Description

In July 2020 a research by WDR and BR showed, that to read along chats, German Federal Criminal Agency (BKA) uses the WhatsApp Web function. The investigators apparently used the option of linking the app to the web browser on a computer. This function mirrors all contents of the chat service in a browser window and lets them access WhatsApp users’ contact list, chat history, the end-to-end encrypted messages, voice messages, videos, etc.

The chat service belonging to Facebook built in a hurdle for such a link. To connect WhatsApp to a browser or the desktop version of the app, a user must scan a QR code on the computer screen using the WhatsApp application on the smartphone. This assumes that the phone is unlocked. A user can also set up face recognition protection for opening WhatsApp.

Allegedly German police used this function in WhatsApp Web version as their method to track text, video, image and short voice messages from a WhatsApp account in real time. This can be seen as Surveillance and Insecurity.