CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2017-8769 — Whatsapp Whatsapp security vulnerability
Facebook WhatsApp Messenger before 2.16.323 for Android uses the SD card for cleartext storage of files (Audio, Documents, Images, Video, and Voice Notes) associated with a chat, even after that chat is deleted. There may be users who expect file deletion to occur upon chat deletion, or who expect encryption (consistent with the application's use of an encrypted database to store chat text). NOTE: the vendor reportedly indicates that they do not "consider these to be security issues" because a user may legitimately want to preserve any file for use "in other apps like the Google Photos gallery" regardless of whether its associated chat is deleted
- Severity
- Medium
- CVSS
- 4.6 (3.1)
- Published
- 2017-05-18
- CISA KEV
- Not currently listed
- Ecosystem
- software/application
- Weaknesses
- CWE-311
Affected products
- whatsapp / whatsapp
Matched remediation archetype
Cryptography, certificate, signature, and channel validation
This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.
Check exposure
- Inventory affected algorithms, key uses, trust stores, certificate validation settings, random sources, and plaintext channels across clients and services.
- Determine which secrets, identities, signatures, or data protections depend on the affected primitive or validation path.
- Check debug, compatibility, fallback, and hostname or audience override settings in build and runtime configuration.
Remediate safely
- Use a maintained platform cryptographic API with approved algorithms, modes, parameters, randomness, and full peer identity validation.
- Remove insecure fallback and validation bypasses; separate keys by purpose and load them from managed secret storage.
- Plan rotation or reissuance for affected keys, certificates, tokens, hashes, or ciphertext and document compatibility sequencing.
Authoritative sources
Complete CVE record and remediation plan
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