New Delhi:
Security researchers on Tuesday said they have detected a bug in WhatsApp that led to group chat crash the moment a destructive message was introduced by the hackers in the chat, leading the entire group chat history being deleted forever. The bug was uncovered by cyber experts at security firm Check Point, who said one text can crash multiple phones in one go.
"The impact of this vulnerability is potentially tremendous, since WhatsApp is the main communication service for many people," Check Point researchers explained.
"Thus, the bug compromises the availability of the app which is a crucial for our daily activities."
WhatsApp is the world's most popular chat app, with more than 1.5 billion users and over a billion groups.
Urging all users to immediately update WhatsApp to the latest version, security researchers at global cybersecurity firm Check Point identified the flaw that would allow a bad actor to create a malicious group message to crash Facebook-owned WhatsApp on users' devices.
Since there was no remedy, all members of the group were forced to uninstall and reinstall WhatsApp in order to regain full use. The group chat could not be restored after the crash occurred.
The bug has now been fixed. The company issued a fix to resolve the issue which is available since WhatsApp version number 2.19.58.
"Because WhatsApp is one of the world's leading communication channels for consumers, businesses and government agencies, the ability to stop people using WhatsApp and delete valuable information from group chats is a powerful weapon for bad actors," said Oded Vanunu, Check Point's Head of Product Vulnerability Research.
"All WhatsApp users should update to the latest version of the app to protect themselves against this possible attack," Vanunu added.
On an average, 65 billion messages are sent on WhatsApp per day by over 1.5 Billion users globally.
