A message that can crash any iPhone
A single character: this is what it takes to crash your iPhone, and block access to messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Outlook for iOS, and Gmail. The new bug not only affects iPhones but other Apple devices like iPads, Mac or OS Watches that are running on the latest version of the operating system. This new text bomb bug can easily be exploited by anyone, as it only requires the user to send a character from the Telugu language.
What is the bug?
As we mentioned before, the crash appears on the phone when a single character from the Telugu language is sent to the device. Telugu is a native Indian language, spoken by about 70 million people in the country. The Internet was quick to redefine the character, and sites like Urban Dictionary already re-translated it and gave it the meaning ‘RIP iPhone’ and ‘Total hell for iOS in just 1 phrase’. This is what it looks like:
How does it work?
As the recipient receives the message with the symbol typed in, the character immediately starts crashes on iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple Watches and Apple TVs running Apple's iOS Springboard. Apps that receive the text bomb try harder and harder to load the character, but they all fail and are also refusing to function properly until the character is removed, which usually means deleting the entire conversation. iMessage, Slack, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Gmail, Outlook for iOS, Safari, and Messages for the macOS versions are all included in the problem.
Of course, some people find the issue extremely funny and Twitter was full of posts that contain the character. This caused a lot of headaches for Apple users, as they need to access Twitter from a non-Apple device, search for the character in their feed and delete it manually. Only after this can life go back to normal.
Apple has been working the issue and trying to fix the bug. The latest beta versions of iOS and macOS are already immune to this issue. A future update before iOS 11.3 release will fix the problem in all of the operating systems.
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