The world’s most popular messaging app, WhatsApp is becoming a popular platform for spam and malware. Recently, WhatsApp users are receiving a message with a warning that WhatsApp will hang if clicked upon a black dot. This is a new bug that is being forwarded via WhatsApp messages and this can crash not just the app but also your Android phone. The users who do click the black dot hangs your phone for a few seconds. Similarly, there is one more message that is circulating on WhatsApp, this version is a message that simply contains text that reads, “don’t-touch-here.”
As per reports, these forward messages contain a code which when tapped overloads WhatsApp and even the OS, resulting in a crash. An online tech portal’s report read, “As with any message bomb, it involves sending and receiving a specially crafted message with hidden symbols in between spaces. Tapping on a portion of the text will basically make the app ‘expand’ the hidden symbols, potentially overloading the app and even the OS”. Such messages or “message bombs” are not new and not limited to Android. Even iMessage is not safe from such bugs that could send the app crashing.
This recent WhatsApp black dot message seems to be affecting a lot more Android users than those on iOS. It is unclear if iOS users have been affected. This is not the first time a bug is being circulated on the messaging app, which has over 1.2 billion monthly active users. This also makes the messaging service one of the easiest platforms to target devices with malware. However, the Facebook-owned WhatsApp has not commented on the potentially disruptive bug so far.
