From Forbes comes the information of how you could find yourself with the blocked WhatsApp account without your consent. That is, for about 12 hours you could be without access to your account. With all that it would entail.
So that the attacker can carry out his misdeed, two very important conditions are needed to make that 12-hour account lockdown a success.
All that the attacker needs to disconnect the WhatsApp account for 12 hours in the first instance are the phone number linked to it, and a new mobile device. And, as far as we know, even if we had 2-step authentication activated to avoid this disconnection, there would be no way for WhatsApp to avoid blocking the account.
WhatsApp account blocked without your consent
The process to be carried out to block a WhatsApp account:
- We need a new device where to install WhatsApp again
- The phone number used in the other mobile is added, and the registration code is requested
- The attacker would request several in a row to enter them incorrectly
- Finally, WhatsApp would not generate more codes warning the attacker and he would go to send an email notifying WhatsApp of the theft of the mobile or account so that it deactivates it
Where the problem resides is in the codes that are requested continuously, since after a few, WhatsApp warns that to generate a new one you will have to wait 12 hours.
The worst of all is that we will not be able to simply do anything to recover the account if we suffer this attack. We would receive an SMS or WhatsApp authentication calls to register a new device and that’s it. Once the email had been processed we were left without the WhatsApp account.
Now only we it remains to wait for WhatsApp to take action on the matter and offer a solution to this account lockdown by a third party.
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