Apple learns of a bug affecting Messages: an Arabic text message causes iPhones to crash.
There is a danger looming over Apple device users, documented in recent days and also found at Cupertino’s headquarters.
Apparently, receiving a specific SMS on an iPhone would cause the terminal itself to crash.
The facts were illustrated by a reader of the site “AppleInsider” who sent screenshots in which it is possible to notice the text of the SMS: it is a message in Arabic.
Once received and opened, the iPhone would proceed to an automatic restart that cannot be blocked in any way.
The device, once restarted, would however show a flaw: the Messages app would be completely unusable. The app would indeed seem out of order.
The news immediately made its way around various portals that specifically deal with Apple products, eventually being commented on Reddit; it is here that a possible explanation was given: there would be a bug in version 8.3 of iOS. Some characters and, more importantly, some lines of text written in a specific sequence would be “interpreted” as strings that cannot be correctly encoded by the operating system, which therefore, in this situation, would crash the terminal itself.
At the time of writing, there does not appear to be any specific problem of data loss or vulnerabilities related to sensitive user data on iPhones “affected” by this bug.
However, it is clear that the inability to continue using the Messages app limits the correct functionality of the device.
Having learned of the problem, Apple immediately moved to propose a solution that will likely arrive in the coming days. From the Cupertino labs, it was only possible to confirm the peculiar and unusual situation, immediately starting to develop a valid solution.
According to information from various technology news sites and forums and self-help groups, the same Arabic message also causes problems when transmitted via WhatsApp: rather than an Apple problem and iOS strictly speaking, it would therefore be a problem related to the Unicode encoding system.
As such, the problem could be much more widespread than it may appear at this time.
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