A computer team discovers a bug in the messaging application and warns how important it is to update the app as soon as possible
WhatsApp is the most used messaging tool on the internet. It is used every day by more than 1,500 million people, generating more than 60,000 million messages every 24 hours. But with only one of those 60,000,000,000 messages, it is able to completely block the application, forcing the user to receive it to have to reinstall it.
It has been discovered by researchers at Check Point, a cybersecurity company that analyzes possible bugs in all types of applications. It affects individuals and group conversations and is so harmful that it not only forces you to reinstall the app to the person who receives it, but only by sending it to a chat group, it infects all users of that group.
As you can see in this YouTube video, the application stops responding and does not allow you to send a message again. You have to remove the app from the phone, reinstall it and, upon entering again, the user who received the message will verify that your chat with the person who sent the message or the group in which it was received has disappeared.
Update the application
To carry out the attack, hackers would not use the app on their mobile, but through the computer. With the WhatsApp Web version, it is possible to obtain the encryption keys to decrypt the messages and be able to manipulate them. Once the malicious code was entered, the WhatsApp app was sent and infected to those who had it open, forcing the user to uninstall the tool.
Oded Vanunu, chief of product vulnerability research at Check Point, has explained to The Independent that “the ability to prevent people from using WhatsApp and eliminating valuable information from group chat history is a powerful weapon.”
Ehren Kret, a WhatsApp software engineer, points out that they value the help immensely and that “thanks to sending Check Point to our error program, we quickly resolved this problem for all WhatsApp applications in mid-September. We have also recently added new controls to prevent people from being added to unwanted groups to avoid communication with untrusted parties altogether.” That means that if we have the application updated, we don’t have to worry.