Indrajeet Bhuyan and Saurav Kar, are the security analysts who initially discovered this bug. They actually demonstrated how a simple message can freeze-up WhatsApp. It seems that a 2kb message in size (this means 2000 words) can automatically make your WhatsApp clash. So if this ever happens to you, a message should pop-up on your screen to give you the heads up that WhatsApp is no longer working.
The thing that is a bit unsettling, is that whoever gets this “Special Message” will be forced to erase his entire conversation and restart another chat. So, if you open the message, it will continue to block the app, this is until you erase your conversation completely. So it’s pointless to try and do anything else.
The dynamic team that discovered the bug, claimed that they also verified it and that it affects several Android versions as well (including JellyBean and KitKat). So be aware of those who intentionally send these messages and try not to open them. This bug hasn’t been submitted to tests on iOS, but it is a sure thing that all of the WhatsApp’s recent updates, meaning the 2.11.431 version and the 2.11.432 are all influenced by this new found bug.
You can also make the app clash from you home computer if you use WhatsApp Web. Of course the computer can support a lot more data than an Android device can. The app was bought in February and Facebok paid a lot of money for it. Based on several statistic reports, it seems that 500 million users could be experiencing this bug. This is not the first type of bug that WhatsApp has to deal with. In the past, there was also the Viewing Profile Image bug even after a contact was erased from one’s contact list. So let’s keep our fingers crossed that this will soon be mended.
- ordoh
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