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DESCRIPTION:   'Title: Gotta Catch 'Em All: How To Capture 3.5 Billion What
 sApp\n   Accounts\n   Tags: DEF CON Official Talk | Exploit 🪲\n   When:
  Friday\, Aug 7\, 17:00 - 17:59 PDT\n   Where: LVCCW Level 1 Hall 3 906 (M
 ain Track 3) and DCTV-3 - [1]Map\n\n   Description:\n\n   Contact discover
 y on instant messengers is designed to help users find\n   their friends. 
 But when identifiers are predictable and safeguards are\n   weak\, it allo
 ws attackers to find everyone. At that point\, "catching\n   'em all" stop
 s being a slogan and becomes an engineering problem.\n\n   In this talk\, 
 we show how we turned WhatsApp into a global Pokédex.\n   By combining re
 verse-engineered API access with large-scale phone\n   number generation\,
  we probed tens of billions of candidates and\n   identified over 3.5 bill
 ion active WhatsApp accounts --- all from a\n   single machine\, without r
 aising flags and getting blocked.\n\n   Beyond simple presence checks\, en
 umeration exposes rich metadata\,\n   including profile pictures\, public 
 keys\, device information\,\n   timestamps\, and user-defined about tags. 
 This enables both macroscopic\n   insights into global platform usage and 
 profiling of individual users.\n\n   Our analysis uncovers systemic issues
 \, such as persistent exposure of\n   numbers from historical data leaks a
 nd reuse of cryptographic keys\n   across accounts. Moreover\, we expose s
 ignals of criminal activity\n   (e.g.\, drug dealers and scam factories)\,
  and measurable activity in\n   regions where WhatsApp is officially restr
 icted (e.g.\, North Korea).\n\n   At global scale\, small design decisions
  become big problems. This is\n   what allowed us to complete our 3.5B-siz
 ed Pokédex.\n\n   https://github.com/sbaresearch/whatsapp-census\n\n   Pa
 per: Hey there! You are using WhatsApp: Enumerating Three Billion\n   Acco
 unts for Security and Privacy\, Gegenhuber et al.\, NDSS 2026\n\n   Speake
 rs:Maximilian Guenther\,Gabriel Gegenhuber\n\n   SpeakerBio:  Maximilian G
 uenther\, SBA Research\n\n   Max Guenther is master student at University 
 of Vienna. He is a\n   cybersecurity nerd and research engineer at XBow. P
 reviously\, he was\n   security analyst at Austrian Power Grid and securit
 y researcher at the\n   Austrian Armed Forces.\n\n   SpeakerBio:  Gabriel 
 Gegenhuber\, University of Vienna\n\n   Gabriel is working on measuring ce
 llular networks\, mobile\n   communication and the Internet. In recent yea
 rs\, his research has\n   examined security and privacy issues in global i
 nstant messaging\n   platforms that use end-to-end encryption\, such as Wh
 atsApp and Signal.\n   He completed his bachelor's and master's degrees at
  TU Wien and his\n   PhD at the University of Vienna. He is currently a po
 stdoctoral\n   researcher at IT:U Linz.\n\n   '\n\n   1. #LVCCW_Level1_Hal
 l3\n\n\n
DTEND:20260808T005900Z
DTSTART:20260808Z
LOCATION:DEF CON Talks - LVCCW Level 1 Hall 3 906 (Main Track 3) and DCTV-3
SUMMARY:Gotta Catch 'Em All: How To Capture 3.5 Billion WhatsApp Accounts
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