WhatsApp Vulnerability Discovered: App Can Crash from a Text Message

A vulnerability has been found in the WhatsApp application that allows the app to crash through a specially crafted text message. Numerous users have reported that their app freezes after receiving a message with the text, “I can hang your WhatsApp for a while just touch below message,” followed by several spaces and the phrase “don’t-touch-here.”

If the recipient taps on this message, the app stops responding to user commands.

Technical Details

According to experts, the crash is caused by a large number of hidden characters in ASCII encoding. While WhatsApp has a limit on the number of characters allowed in a message, this particular message exceeds that limit. Users can receive and read the message because the special characters are initially hidden. However, when the message is tapped, WhatsApp attempts to process it, which leads to the app crashing.

How to Fix the Issue

To resolve the problem, simply restart your smartphone. This vulnerability only affects the Android version of WhatsApp and cannot be exploited on iOS devices.

Related Issues

Previously, a similar issue was discovered in the iOS operating system, where sending a special character from the Telugu Indian language alphabet could cause device malfunctions.