Watch out! This 'text bomb' can crash your iPhone
What's the story
Apple is having a hard time maintaining the security of its products. Just recently, we learned that a Mail app flaw was actively being exploited, and now, another bug has been revealed, an issue that allows hackers to crash iPhones, iPads, and Macs by sending a simple text message, 9to5Mac reported. Here's all you need to know about it.
Issue
Characters crashing Apple devices
Like all other "text bombs" reported in the past, the latest case also revolves around a text message, created from a string of certain characters, landing on your iPhone or iPad. As the formatted text string appears in a notification, the iOS triggers an unexpected response before going completely unresponsive and crashing the device in use.
Details
Impact varies from case to case
In some cases, the unresponsive device crashes and restarts automatically, while in others, it simply remains unusable, prompting the user to force restart the phone manually. Now, while this does not compromise the security of your iPhone, it sure poses a risk of attacks where people could bombard your device with the text string in question, forcing it to crash repeatedly.
Message
How to identify the buggy text string?
The text string includes some Sindhi language characters as well as the Italian flag emoji, although some say that the latter is not necessarily required to crash the device. The origin of the text remains unclear, but it is now going viral on social media, which means you could theoretically be targeted with the text via Twitter or the main iOS Messages app.
Fix
Fix to be released with next iOS update
As of now, the only way to deal with this issue is disabling notification previews for all messaging apps on your iPhone/iPad. Apple has released a fix with iOS 13.4.5 beta, which indicates that we should get a stable patch in the coming weeks. The company, however, still remains mum on the text message issue or how it originated.
Twitter Post
Here's the bug in action
The craziest iOS crash text bug 💀 pic.twitter.com/29LJPb67WP
— EverythingApplePro (@EveryApplePro) April 23, 2020