One of lime and one of sand. If less than an hour ago we told you about a new feature that will soon be coming to WhatsApp, now we have to talk about Meta’s instant messaging service again, although in this case it is to warn you, if you are an Android user, about a technical problem that affects the client of the service for this operating system, and that the app can crash, and for this to happen, you just have to try to open a link.
The link in question, which if it appears in any of your WhatsApp conversations you should not try to open, is http://wa.me/settings and, if you click on it, the Android app (does not affect iOS clients or the web version) will hang, forcing it to be restartedand perhaps in some cases to the restart of the device in which it is being used, in addition to permanently prevent access to that conversation to all participants in it. But don’t worry, it has an easy solution (or solutions, actually).
Before going to the steps to follow if you have accidentally received that link and clicked on it, the first thing to do is clarify that It is not a vulnerability or a malicious link (even if it is sent with the intention of being funny). We are facing a bug in the WhatsApp client for Android, since this link should actually serve to take us directly to the app’s configuration, but due to some problem in its code, it gives rise to this bug.
๐จ WhatsApp failure alert! Beware of the new denial of service bug ๐ฅ for groups on Android. ๐ฑ
A new denial of service issue is being openly exploited in WhatsApp groups. It is spreading rapidly due to its ease ofโฆ pic.twitter.com/NtYd34tahb
โ DragonJAR โ Computer Security (@DragonJAR) May 27, 2023
To end the problem we have two possibilities. The first consists of access that conversation from another device that does not use Android (like an iPhone), or from the WhatsApp web interface (we must have previously logged in to them, yes) to, from there, delete the message that contains the URL.
Another system, which seems to have worked for some users, is activate airplane mode on the device, then access WhatsApp and, still in offline mode, proceed to delete the message with the link. Then we can reactivate the connectivity of the device and use WhatsApp again normally.
Now that this issue has been made public, it is likely that all kinds of open groups will be filled with “funny” who are dedicated to sharing this link, so it is best to pay even more attention than usual in these types of environments. However, that the link is shown in the conversation is not a problem, it is necessary to try to open it to reproduce the error. WhatsApp has not published, for the moment, information about it, but since it is reaching a huge diffusion, we can hope that they are already at work and that they solve it in the short term.
