Signal and other video chat apps found to have some major security flaws

Vulnerabilities found in Signal, Google Duo, Facebook Messenger, and other messaging apps allowed attackers to listen in on users without their permission, security experts have warned.

“On January 29, 2019, a serious vulnerability was discovered in Group FaceTime which allowed an attacker to call a target and force the call to connect without user interaction from the target, allowing the attacker to listen to the target’s surroundings without their knowledge or consent,” Natalie Silvanovich, a security engineer at Google’s Project Zero, wrote.

“The bug was remarkable in both its impact and mechanism. The ability to force a target device to transmit audio to an attacker device without gaining code execution was an unusual and possibly unprecedented impact of a vulnerability.”