For the industry of data recovery, the feature of message recovery through reverse engineering by GB WhatsApp is quite distinct from that of the official version. The hit ratio of its “Anti-message Recall” module can be as high as 89.6%, while it has the capacity to retain the original message for up to 72 hours after the other party’s recall action (the official one cannot retain it). Technical analysis suggests that this feature is based on SQLite database’s real-time mirroring technology with a median recovery lag of 1.2 seconds and accommodates 12 formats including text, image, and voice. However, a 2023 research conducted by Carnegie Mellon University established that the data recovered is associated with 6.8% metadata loss rate (e.g., sender’s device model and timestamp drift higher than ±37 seconds). According to statistics, users use this feature 4.7 times a day on average, among which 25% is used for the traceability of contract terms in commercial situations.
Experiments of the encryption mechanism have shown that GB WhatsApp restore deleted messages to clear text stored in the/sdcard/GBWhatsApp /. Trash path, whereas the official WhatsApp encrypted with AES – 256 local backup. Experimental data by cybersecurity company Symantec in 2022 showed that the rate for unauthorized devices accessing these restored messages was 34% (the official version was 2.1%), and the malware rate for stealing messages through this vulnerability was 0.9 times per thousand devices per month. One such typical example is the Rio-March telecom fraud case in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2023. The hackers used a recovery cache to obtain the medical invoice information of 2,875 customers, which was worth 620,000 US dollars, showing the loopholes of their security protocol.
The operational risk feature shows that gb whatsapp’s auto-backup feature will retain erased messages within Google Drive for up to 7 days (the default official is to erase them immediately). Upon restoration, the cloud transfer rate is 2.1MB/s, but a 15% version conflict causes data overwriting. In the divorce cases tried by the Delhi High Court of India in 2023, 48% of the digital evidence were the message logs obtained by gb whatsapp, which extended the usual trial period of family cases by 22 days. Device performance tests show that running the message recovery function all the time increases the peak RAM usage to 1.8GB (official client is 720MB), resulting in a 1.4-hour/day reduction in battery life for mid-range phones.
Market alternative solution data shows that the success rate of users using the inbuilt recovery feature of GB WhatsApp is 92.3%, as opposed to third-party data recovery software (e.g., Dr.Fone) costing $19.99 one time and sharing a 68% success rate. However, its technical shortfall is that recovered messages cannot be re-planted into the end-to-end encryption system. In 2023, the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) found the probability of the vulnerability being used for man-in-the-middle attacks increased 7.2 times. Cost-benefit analysis shows that although enterprise users will use this feature for compliance audits, the associated fine cost to recover from a single violation is at most $2,800 (according to the standards of GDPR), 6.7 times the function benefit (placed at $420 each time), constructing a high-risk premium.