WhatsApp Crash Vulnerability Revealed - Remote Attacks

600 million stiff user base of WhatsApp is reportedly at the great adventure of remote crashes. Co-ordinate to latest discovery, anyone can remotely crash your WhatsApp by but sending a specially crafted message.

WhatsApp crash vulnerability:

This discovery has been made by Independent security researchers based in India. 17-year old Indrajeet Bhuyan and Saurav Kor shared a video sit-in nearly this WhatsApp Bulletin Handler vulnerability which allows anyone to remotely crash WhatsApp.

In a video sit-in, they showed that how a 2000 words (2kb in size) message in special character set tin can crash Whatsapp messenger app. Previous information technology was discovered that sending a huge bulletin ( greater than 7mb in size) on Whatsapp could crash victim device and app immediately, but using this new exploit attacker only demand to send a very small size (approx 2kb) bulletin to the victim.

This WhatsApp vulnerability affects all the Android versions from KitKat and beneath and reportedly affect the app on iOS likewise. However, the assail does not work on the Windows viii.1. If someone attempts to send you lot a message to crash your app, yous will have to delete that unabridged conversation with the sender to get abroad from the crashing issue.

Which brings us to the more than important indicate of this blazon of attack: every bit pointed out by The Hacker News (who were sent the first emails from the hacker duo) too, this assault could be used delete a group or thread on another user's device. Y'all may have said something that you now intend to delete, you can send this exploit to accept the recipient left with no pick but to delete the entire thread. This could potentially attack a user'southward privacy and security every bit threatening / harassing messages could be used as a witness.

WhatsApp is world'due south foremost messaging app loved by ane and all. While the app received a little push back after Facebook acquiring it, the app recently announced end-to-end encryption on the platform securing users' information from unwanted intrusion. We still look a response from WhatsApp as this is a major incident in the history of the app that could be potentially harmful to users.

-Source and report: The Hacker News