Mobile instant messaging apps rapidly gain ground. Today it is one of the most popular and convenient communication channels, however, also increasingly becoming a confidential information leak channel.
In November 2017, a scandal broke out over insider trading in India. During the investigation conducted by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) several chat groups limited largely to traders and market insiders were revealed in the WhatsApp messenger. In these groups, the violator posted the information about the financial performance indicators of companies prior to their official disclosure. This had a significant impact on the stock price and gave the unscrupulous brokers a huge competitive advantage.
Apparently, messengers have become a favorite channel for leaking university exam questions. For example, in the fall of 2017, a massive compromise of entrance exam questions of Gulbarga University (India) was detected. Confidential documents leaked via WhatsApp. The management of the university decided to cancel the exam and appointed a retest. However, this time the unknown persons got access to the exam questions a few hours before the exam and distributed them through the messenger again.
The Information people share in instant messengers may be of great interest to cybercriminals. So, in August 2016, Iranian hackers exploited Telegram's vulnerability and compromised the telephone numbers of more than 15 million users of the popular instant messaging service. In addition, the attackers managed to read the correspondence of many journalists, human rights defenders and a number of Iranian high-ranking officials.
Most certainly, the people whose work is related to the state secrets should pay considerable attention when using instant messaging services. In 2017, an unpleasant incident occurred in Israel. By spreading malicious software through Facebook Messenger, attackers gained access to information about the location of military units in the Gaza Strip and other classified information. Victims of cyber attacks were more than 100 military personnel using the messenger on Android devices. In order to bait the victims, the hackers used messages of an intimate nature.
