Do you know crashing Whatsapp desktop or mobile version doesn’t require advanced hacking skills or machinery, what you need is 4000 smileys?
Yes, it’s true, you need 4000 smileys to crash WhatsApp. This bug was exposed by a security researcher (Indrajeet Bhuyan) who during his experiments typed in 4000 smileys and the WhatsApp’s desktop version got slow and upon sending it to the other user, it got crashed due to “Buffer overflow”. Remember, WhatsApp has a limit of 6000 characters in a message.
“….so it crashes while we type and send and in mobile too when it receives it overflows the buffer and it crashes,” Bhuyan explains.
Identical results on all the versions
This bug had the same results on all the browsers i.e. Firefox, Opera and Chrome. The bug works on both android and iOS devices.
Furthermore, this bug can: “be used to conduct a Denial of service in the browser and it freezes the browser and gives a ‘not responding’ error,” he adds.
Here’s how it’s done:
How to fix this issue?
In order to fix this issue, there is only one way out, you will have to delete the complete chat with the person who is trying to send you these messages.
Though, WhatsApp will be fixing this bug soon so you don’t have to worry!
About the researcher:
Indrajeet Bhuyan is the same researcher who found a critical vulnerability in WhatsApp allowing hackers to expose users’ photo.