WhatsApp users have been urged to look out for a nasty bug which could crash their phone.
Security researchers have discovered a vulnerability which lets hackers bring down their victim’s device with just one message.
If you receive this terror text it will wipe out your chat history – potentially destroying happy memories and valuable data.
It is sent via a group chat and will bring down everyone involved in the conversation.
In a blog post, three researchers from the tech firm Check Point wrote: ‘In WhatsApp, there are many important groups with valuable content. If an attacker uses this technique and crashes one of these groups all chat history will be gone and further communication would be impossible.
‘The impact of this vulnerability is potentially tremendous since WhatsApp is the main communication service for many people. Thus, the bug compromises the availability of the app which is crucial for our daily activities.
‘In order to recover from the issue, the user has to uninstall WhatsApp, install it again and remove the group which contains the malicious payload.’
To make sure you don’t fall victim to the bug, you should make sure you update WhatsApp immediately.
‘WhatsApp greatly values the work of the technology community to help us maintain strong security for our users globally,’ said WhatsApp Software Engineer Ehren Kret.
“Thanks to the responsible submission from Check Point to our bug bounty program, we quickly resolved this issue for all WhatsApp apps 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 all together.’
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