Apple's iOS is considered a polished mobile operating system. But there are times that bugs go under the radar waiting for anyone to find them.
Following the discovery of an iOS Mail bug that has been around for years, it was found that a string of characters can make iPhones crash worldwide.
First reported by a user on Reddit, the bug is an iOS notification bug similar to the previous 2018 Telugu text crash bug.
In this case, the specific “text bomb” can be triggered using a specific character in Sindhi, the official language spoken by the Sindhi people in the Pakistani province of Sindh.
Here is video created by Filip Koroy from EverythingApplePro to show the bug in action.
As shown, upon receiving the message, the iPhone crashes.
The craziest iOS crash text bug pic.twitter.com/29LJPb67WP
— EverythingApplePro (@EveryApplePro) April 23, 2020
According to reports, the bug only causes crashes if the message appears in an incoming notification on both iOS and iPadOS (operating system for iPad, based on iOS) version 13.4.1, and can often completely locking up the device and even forcing a restore via DFU mode.
This iOS and iPadOS flaw is serious because anyone can initiate the crash on another person’s Apple device by just sending a specific combination of these characters. To launch an attack, an attacker simply has to send the character in any text messaging app to the target.
This makes it a broad scope attack since forwarding texts to multiple users at a time, can target multiple users simultaneously.
Acknowledging this, Apple is moving quickly to patch the bug.
But before the patch can be released, users need to tweak some settings to prevent the bug from crashing their device.
To do this, users can disable notifications for all kind of messaging apps and others.
Essentially, every messaging client or app with a messaging feature, including the iMessage, WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram and others, as well as social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and of course, Mail and other apps.
To be absolutely sure they have disabled all text-based notifications, users can also completely disable notifications for every app capable of posting notification.
Fortunately, it was reported that Apple has fixed the bug in iOS 13.4.5.
However, the operating system is still in beta, meaning that it isn't available for most users.