WhatsApp rolls out new protections against advanced exploits and spyware – Malwarebytes

WhatsApp is quietly rolling out a new safety layer for photos, videos, and documents, and it lives entirely under the hood. It won’t change how you chat, but it will change what happens to the files that move through your chats—especially the kind that can hide malware. The new feature, called Strict Account Settings, is rolling out gradually over the coming weeks. To see whether you have the option—and to enable it—go to Settings > Privacy > Advanced. Image courtesy of WhatsApp Yesterday, we wrote about a WhatsApp bug on Android that made headlines because a malicious media file in a group chat could be downloaded and used as an attack vector without you tapping anything. You only had to be added to a new group to be exposed to the booby-trapped file. That issue highlighted something security folks have worried about for years: media files are a great vehicle for attacks, and they do not always exploit WhatsApp itself, but bugs in the operating system or its media libraries. In Meta’s explanation of the new technology, it points back to the 2015 Stagefright Android vulnerability, where simply processing a malicious video could compromise a device. Back then, WhatsApp worked around the issue by teaching
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