14 DAY TRIAL // Security researcher Indrajeet Bhuyan has found another way to torment WhatsApp developers, discovering yet another issue in their application, working both on the desktop version and the mobile apps.
Almost a year ago, Mr. Bhuyan had discovered that by sending text messages of a few thousand words (entire book chapters) that weighed more than 2 KB, WhatsApp would crash on the desktop and Android version, while shortly freezing on iOS.
After WhatsApp fixed the bug, one year later, Mr. Bhuyan discovered that while Facebook put a muzzle on chatty users that liked to type too much text, they haven't added a limit on the number of emojis someone can send.
According to his tests, by typing and sending around 6,600 smileys (works sometimes with 4,200), both the desktop and the Android versions would crash. As before, the iOS version would only freeze for a little while.
Users would have to delete entire conversations where an emoji bomb was received, which some might find useful if not wanting their conversations logged on somebody else's devices. Some users like, let's say, blackmailers, or people that sent nude pictures to their former significant others.
The researcher tested the bug on Android devices running Marshmallow, Lollipop and Kitkat, and on desktops via Firefox and Google Chrome.
Mr. Bhuyan says he reported the issue to WhatsApp, but a patch has not been issued yet, at the time of his disclosure.
