According to third-party security firm ESET’s 2023 research, gb whatsapp’s “App Lock” function supports using 4-6 digit passwords or custom letter combinations (up to 12 characters), the encryption system employs the AES-256 algorithm, and the response time for the unlocking interface is 0.3 seconds (Test device: Samsung Galaxy S23. After being initiated by this feature, the background process will disable other app screen overlay permissions forcefully (e.g., screen recording apps), reducing the rate of unauthorized access by 0.8%. For instance, when conducting an internal audit in 2023, Flipkart, an Indian e-commerce website, found that the incidence of data breaches in employee accounts utilizing gb whatsapp password lock was lowered by 73% compared to accounts without having this option enabled. However, there were still 9% of cases where hacked passwords (like the repeating numbers “123456”) were cracked using brute force attacks.
At the level of technical implementation, gb whatsapp password lock module was done by overriding Android’s Windows Manager API. Its code was inserted by approximately 8,500 lines (with a ratio of 3.2% to the total volume of the application’s code), and the size of the installation package was up to 82MB (the official one is 45MB). Tests show that when activating the password lock, the application’s cold launch time is slowed by 0.7 seconds (1.9 seconds to 2.6 seconds) and the peak memory usage by 18% (320MB to 378MB). Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky pointed out in September 2023 that gb whatsapp has a vulnerability in storing passwords: When the “fingerprint unlocking” feature is enabled, the plaintext password will be cached temporarily in a file outside the system key store (path:) / data/data/com. Gbwhatsapp/cache), is the likelihood of malicious software to steal 4.3%, 21.5 times higher than 0.2% of the official security software.
As far as legal risk is concerned, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the EU requires cryptographic systems to be certified by EN 303 645, which gb whatsapp does not have. In February 2024, one of the logistic companies was imposed a fine of 120,000 euros by the Spanish Data Protection Agency for having its employees used the gb whatsapp password lock to bypass the enterprise mobile device management system and in doing so making 6,500 of customers’ address details unverifiable and untainted. Secondly, the mechanism to reset gb whatsapp password lacks two-factor authentication (2FA). In the 2023 global user sample, 14% of the accounts’ passwords were reset due to SIM card hijacking (the percentage for the official version of WhatsApp was only 2%).
User behavior statistics reveal that among the group with gb whatsapp password lock on, 35% of users unlock more than 20 times a day (with average time consumption of 2.4 seconds per time), and among them, users between 18-24 years old account for 62%. Research firm Gartner observed that high-frequency unlocking activities increase the rate of device battery wear by 1.8 times (on the basis of testing for 500 charge and discharge cycles), and increase the rate of screen touch sensor wear to 0.7% per million operations (0.3% in official applications). From the perspective of privacy protection effect, regarding the 2023 ransomware cases cracked by the Brazilian police, the cracking possibility of the chat records encrypted by the criminal group with the gb whatsapp password lock function was 11% (with the help of the Cellebrite UFED tool). However, the cracking rate of the same type of information with end-to-end encryption software such as Signal is only 0.05%.
At the level of performance optimization and other solutions, when the user turns on the gb whatsapp password lock and operates the “Incognito mode” simultaneously, the CPU load will be raised from the baseline value of 22% to 38% (test device: Xiaomi 13 Pro), raising the surface temperature of the device to 41.3℃ (ambient temperature 25℃). Security experts suggest integration with hardware-based defenses such as Samsung Knox or Huawei TEE security environments, which can extend the duration password cracking is done from around 6.5 hours to 3.2 years (given millions of hash calculations per second). Integration, however, requires an added development cost of around $15,000 and adds an additional 19MB to the application installation package size. The overall evaluation shows that gb whatsapp password lock function has significant room for further improvement in the proportion between convenience and security.
