A leading security expert has warned all WhatsApp users that their accounts could be deactivated by anyone sending one email, and there’s currently no way to stop it.
It’s important to note that WhatsApp is in something of a sticky situation here, in that it needs to make the process of deactivating an account as simple, and speedy, as possible in the event of a phone being lost or stolen. The privacy implications are obvious were this not the case. And forget about; your personal security could well be at risk if your WhatsApp messages got into the hands of an abusive partner, or worse, an oppressive regime in certain use cases.
How do you reactivate your account? Simply by firing up the WhatsApp app and logging in again. In effect, the deactivation is more of a logging out exercise, but one that comes with a “log back in within 30 days or the bunny gets it” threat. As Moore, and others, pointed out in the Twitter thread, this could potentially be used to execute a denial of service attack against a user by writing a script that continually sends the deactivation email for a period of 30 days.
It would appear that there isn’t any way, at least for now, that a user could mitigate against a malicious actor denying them access to their WhatsApp account using the deactivation email method. I have reached out to Meta for a statement regarding this and will update this article when I hear back.
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