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Title: PSA: There's a New Character Bug That Can Cause iPhones to Crash Post by: HCK on August 23, 2024, 04:05:11 pm PSA: There's a New Character Bug That Can Cause iPhones to Crash
There is a new character bug that can result in a respring on the iPhone (https://www.macrumors.com/guide/iphone/) or iPad (https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/ipad/), reports TechCrunch (https://infosec.exchange/@kpwn/113000348717635390). Typing "":: in the search field after swiping over to the App Library will cause the Springboard to reset, dropping you back at the ‌iPhone‌'s Lock Screen. A respring is not a full reset, and it only takes a few seconds for the ‌iPhone‌ to be functional again. (https://images.macrumors.com/article-new/2023/05/bug-security-vulnerability-issue-fix-larry.jpg) Typing the same characters into the Settings app search interface will cause the Settings app to crash, but putting it in a Spotlight search doesn't seem to impact anything. The respring seemed to only happen on devices running iOS 17 (https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/ios-17/) when we tested, but putting those characters into a search interface on a device running iOS 18 (https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/ios-18/) does result in some odd behavior, such as the characters disappearing and the Settings app crashing. You can actually type in just "": and any other character to cause the respring to happen, so it's something related to the first three symbols in a four character sequence. Character bugs have in the past spread though Messages and have allowed users to crash the iPhones of others, but this is a much more insignificant issue because the ‌iPhone‌ owner needs to manually type (or paste) the characters into a search interface. There does not appear to be a way to affect an ‌iPhone‌ through Messages or another texting platform. It's likely Apple will address the issue with an iOS update in the near future. This article, "PSA: There's a New Character Bug That Can Cause iPhones to Crash (https://www.macrumors.com/2024/08/21/iphone-character-bug-respring/)" first appeared on MacRumors.com (https://www.macrumors.com) Discuss this article (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/psa-theres-a-new-character-bug-that-can-cause-iphones-to-crash.2434102/) in our forums Source: PSA: There's a New Character Bug That Can Cause iPhones to Crash (https://www.macrumors.com/2024/08/21/iphone-character-bug-respring/) |