As one of the most popular instant messaging apps of all time, it
shouldn’t come as a surprise that WhatsApp is a common target for
malicious activity. Spammers regularly target users to advertise
products and services of ill repute. Worse still, social engineering
scammers are increasingly turning towards instant messaging to carry
out phishing attacks designed to steal personal information. However,
the fact that WhatsApp now encrypts every message while in transit
using end-to-end encryption makes it impossible for law enforcement to
request access to communication histories. Facebook, the owner of
WhatsApp, does not have access to this data, regardless of whether
it’s hosted in the cloud or stored on the device itself. As such,
acquiring WhatsApp message history is only possible by accessing
end-user devices or data backups stored locally or in the cloud.
To protect against instances of data loss and other threats, as well
as supply evidence to law enforcement in case of being subject to
litigation, businesses that use WhatsApp for work need access to their
communication histories. That’s why Elcomsoft Explorer for WhatsApp
was developed. This solution makes it easy to acquire and analyze
communication histories from multiple sources. It can extract
databased containing messages from Android phones, with or without
root access. It can also download and access any backups stored in
Google Drive or iCloud Drive, where cloud backups are stored by
default on Android and iOS devices respectively. Finally, it can also
extract data from locally stored backups. This solution supports the
regular WhatsApp for Android and iOS as well as WhatsApp for Business
on any devices running Android.
Elcomsoft Explorer for WhatsApp lets business users easily perform
complete audit trails of potential cyberattacks and other suspicious
activities. If an employee has been misusing a company account, for
example, this solution will reveal it immediately through the
conveniently built-in viewer, which displays messages, calls and
multimedia files exchanged. Similarly, if your organization has fallen
victim to a social engineering scam or other attack, you’ll be able to
use the software to perform a full investigation of how the attack was
carried out. Not only will this help you remediate faster; it will
also help you reduce the future risk to your business and identify
employees who might need further security awareness training. The
program supports both rooted and non-rooted devices, and it can
decrypt backups provided you have the correct user password. You can
also use the built-in search function to quickly find records of
interest in mere seconds.
For any organization that uses WhatsApp, Elcomsoft Explorer for
WhatsApp is a must-have solution for monitoring communications through
this popular channel and maintaining full audit trails of all
activities that take place over the platform. It’s the ultimate
digital forensic solutions for one of the world’s most popular instant
messaging apps, and there’s a good chance it can help get your
business out of a potentially serious situation, such as a wrongful
accusation by law enforcement or an attempted phishing scam in
progress. Download the trial version today or buy the standard edition
online at https://www.elcomsoft.com/exwa
Author info:
Olga Koksharova
elcomexwa.pad@submitpad.org
Olga Koksharova is involved in security research related to mobile
forensics. During the last years, Olga has been busy researching
security trends in the world of mobile forensic. Olga is an expert in
cryptography and IT security.
