CVE-2019-3566

A bug in WhatsApp for Androids messaging logic would potentially allow a malicious individual who has taken over over a WhatsApp users account to recover previously sent messages. This behavior requires independent knowledge of metadata for previous messages, which are not available publicly. This issue affects WhatsApp for Android 2.19.52 and 2.19.54 - 2.19.103, as well as WhatsApp Business for Android starting in v2.19.22 until v2.19.38.

Weakness

The product does not restrict or incorrectly restricts access to a resource from an unauthorized actor.

Affected Software

Extended Description

Access control involves the use of several protection mechanisms such as:

When any mechanism is not applied or otherwise fails, attackers can compromise the security of the product by gaining privileges, reading sensitive information, executing commands, evading detection, etc. There are two distinct behaviors that can introduce access control weaknesses:

Potential Mitigations

• Compartmentalize the system to have “safe” areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area.
• Ensure that appropriate compartmentalization is built into the system design, and the compartmentalization allows for and reinforces privilege separation functionality. Architects and designers should rely on the principle of least privilege to decide the appropriate time to use privileges and the time to drop privileges.

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/19.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/441.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/478.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/479.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/502.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/503.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/536.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/546.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/550.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/551.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/552.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/556.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/558.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/562.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/563.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/564.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/578.html

References

• https://www.facebook.com/security/advisories/cve-2019-3566
• https://www.facebook.com/security/advisories/cve-2019-3566