"Scary messages" break WhatsApp

WhatsApp users are reporting a nasty new bug. There is no official name for this problem, but it has been dubbed "scary messages" on the internet.

It looks like this: you receive a message or open a contact card, which contain a long series of incomprehensible characters. It seems that this does not make any sense, but the messenger may misinterpret it, or it may not be able to process it correctly due to the strange structure. As a result, the application goes into an endless crash. This means that when you try to open the application, it freezes and crashes. If you try to open WhatsApp again, the problem will recur.

Worst of all, there is no way to fix this problem yet. There are unofficial modified versions of the messenger with protection against such messages, but the official client is still vulnerable. The screenshots below show messages in such an application: they did not break the messenger precisely because of the above-mentioned protective function.

-Anti crash integrated into official WhatsApp: There are messages designed to freeze or crash your WhatsApp. Then there are modded WhatsApp versions that have a “Crashcode protection” like a bigger Unicode database. We need this integrated into the official application.

instagram viewer

pic.twitter.com/bpyWtFUwQO

- Ian (@ Ian_Oli_01) August 15, 2020

How to protect yourself from such messages

1. If you see such a message, do not forward it to your friends. This is not a joke as they can lose their entire chat history and important files.
2. If you see in the notification that you have been sent a message with incomprehensible symbols, do not open it. Open instead web version of whatsapp on your computer and delete the entire dialog without opening it.
3. Customize who can invite you to group chats: if you choose the "Contacts only" setting, you will limit yourself from attackers who send such messages to random users.

Although unofficial clients work, we do not recommend using them because third-party applications do not provide end-to-end encryption and your data may be at risk. The problem affects both iOS and Android, and the breaking codes for both versions are different, and WhatsApp has secret chats in which they exchange such codes.