Aside from occasional outages, WhatsApp is quite stable as a service and is considered one of the most secure communication apps thanks to its end-to-end encrypted messages. However, it also has some problems. It is often the target of attacks, or to be precise, its users become victims of malicious people who use various methods to steal data and more. This time, a link causes multiple versions of the app to crash at once.
We have seen similar problems in the past. Two years ago, a wallpaper took over the internet because it contained a single pixel that froze the device. Five years ago, a message containing a black circle emoji with a series of invisible characters embedded in it exploited a bug in Android’s text rendering engine and caused several apps, including WhatsApp, to crash. This new bug is less severe than the previous ones we’ve seen, as it causes the app to crash only when the user opens a group or private chat that contains the wa.me/settings link. This link normally redirects the user to WhatsApp settings, but now crashes the Android version of the app.
The bug appears to affect both personal and group chats, even in Business. Opening a chat with the link causes the instant crash. However, the application restarts normally and remains functional unless the user reopens that message thread. Android Authority has confirmed that version 2.23.10.77 of the app is affected, but there’s a good chance that users of other versions will also experience issues. The exact cause of this error seems to be buried in the way WhatsApp recognizes the actual URL behind the shortened link. This is definitely a bug that the company needs to fix, but there is a workaround. WhatsApp for web seems to be unaffected by this bug.
So the user can connect through the browser and delete from the conversation the message that contains the link and causes the application to crash. Then, he will be able to use the application without problems on Android devices as well.
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