from the i-wanna-text-it-to-all-my-apple-loving-friends dept.
iOS bug causes crash when rendering certain text string
Ars Technica reports on a bug in iOS that can cause iPhones to reboot. This bug also seems to affect OS X under certain situations and extends beyond text messages on iOS. The trigger is trying to render the string in question.
A similar rendering bug for Apple has occurred previously that was also covered by Ars Technica
Microsoft has also fallen victim to font rendering bugs in the past:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/security/ms13-060.aspx
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/security/ms10-063.aspx
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/security/ms14-036.aspx
iOS bug can cause text message to crash iPhones
I'm not a fan of iOS or Apple, in fact I find their interfaces so incredibly frustrating that I refuse to use their products, so I find this particularly amusing:
A newly discovered and potentially worrisome iOS bug has been causing Phones to crash and automatically reboot when a certain string of characters is received via the Messages app. The string in question, which consists of both English and Arabic characters, was first brought to light via a Reddit thread before being corroborated by MacRumors late on Wednesday evening.
"Sending the string of characters to an iPhone results in an immediate respring, causing an iPhone to crash and quickly reboot," the report notes. "From there, if the Messages app was opened at a list view, the Messages app crashes automatically when you try to open it. If it was opened to the conversation where you received the message, the app will open, but attempting to go to another conversation causes Messages to crash."
Read more here.
(Score: 4, Informative) by pkrasimirov on Friday May 29 2015, @11:13AM
AFAIK the bug is when the message preview tries to shorten the message text and append '...' at end. Resulting at illegal unicode I guess. Vulnerable since iOS 3.8. Easy workaround: Settings > Messages > Show Preview > Off.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2015, @12:30PM
Of course, even if it produces invalid Unicode, the very fact that the invalid Unicode crashes the OS is a separate bug. Already crashing the app would be a bug, but a failing app should never be able to crash the OS.
So if your analysis is right, there are three bugs:
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Saturday May 30 2015, @06:34AM
However, a respring is not a reboot. Springboard is the desktop, so to speak, and not the OS. Still annoying, though.
(Score: 5, Funny) by FatPhil on Friday May 29 2015, @11:54AM
The bug/crash issue exists in the process that displays notifications, which is SpringBoard (one of the reasons disabling notifications fixes it).
The bug seems to cause the process to go into a recursive, infinite loop, using up an insane amount of resources until there are no more resources left. There seem to be two outcomes to this starvation:
1. The process (SpringBoard) crashes. This causes everything to flash as springboard gets relaunched. SpringBoard is an extremely important process as it handles multiple things. It's possible its death can result in a reboot since it's never supposed to die.
2. The iPhone, starving of resources, does panic(), forcing a reboot.
"""
Which is no reason not to rant about systemd!
Compare SpringBoard with systemd. Very important. Never supposed to die. And *does multiple things*. The most important things should be *as simple as possible*, and should offload as much as possible onto other tasks which can be expected to occasionally fail. Quite why something so vital to the system as a while is doing something as *utterly mundane* as previewing messages, I don't know, that's insanely bad design. A design shared by ... whatever, you get my point.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Touché) by janrinok on Friday May 29 2015, @12:23PM
A python man, by any chance?
"""
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday May 29 2015, @12:53PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Friday May 29 2015, @01:34PM
Funny, I was going to make the same comment about systemd. I recently heard it will also require reboots for updates in some cases. wiping out one of the advantages of Linux kernel 4. If so, it's going to be the new Intel/Microsoft thing: Linux giveth, systemd taketh away.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday May 29 2015, @10:19PM
I'll bite. Systemd does not manage font rendering. I'm willing to bet money that it never will. Systemd also prevents crashes of any other service from bringing down the OS. So basically systemd is almost entirely unrelated to the subject at hand.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Saturday May 30 2015, @06:37AM
I'm willing to bet money that it never will.
Sooo... How much money are you willing to lo.. ehm, I mean "bet"?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday May 30 2015, @07:58AM
A great counter argument to my "systemd absolutely does font rendering" argument, which I now fully retract.
... Oh, wait, I didn't actually say that at all.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2015, @11:59AM
finally apple got their ownZ "ping-of-death".
(Score: 2, Interesting) by martyb on Friday May 29 2015, @02:38PM
As SoylentNews has UTF-8 support for unicode characters, this seems like a useful test case.
According to http://9to5mac.com/community/the-latest-iphone-security-vulnerability-imessages-bug/ [9to5mac.com]:
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday May 29 2015, @02:55PM
Does is crash out in Safari?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday May 29 2015, @07:37PM
Damn, every time I try to read that message my brain reboots! :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2015, @08:39PM
how do you remember that you read it before?
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Friday May 29 2015, @02:44PM
I had several Nokia phones at least 12 years ago that did this.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday May 29 2015, @03:29PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by jmorris on Friday May 29 2015, @05:28PM
Why is it almost obligatory to accompany any discussion of a flaw in Apple's products to include a reminder that someone else, usually Microsoft, has also suffered the same problem? Come on fanboys, suck it up and own it. Apple is supposed to the the 1200lb gorilla in the room now, not the scrappy upstart, it is about time their fanboys realized it and started treating them like industry leaders.
It is almost as bad as what can only be called a genuine sense of pride when an Apple fan brags how insanely great Apple profit margins are. Hey! You are bragging that they are hosing you! Unless you own APPL you should not be doing that. Again, when everyone was on Apple Death Watch it was a self defense mechanism, the herd assuring themselves their beloved vendor was healthy and not going tits up on em. But they have the highest market capitalization in the world, they aren't a fragile flower of beauty in a crappy world of drab PC clones, again, they ARE the establishment and YOU are worshipping -the man-.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by Tork on Friday May 29 2015, @06:05PM
Oh, and if you're going to complain about fanboy insecurity it would be wise of you to not debate a topic that nobody brought up. And if you do, you should at least understand what you're arguing about.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday May 29 2015, @10:22PM
I'm sure you will be happy to know that I'm a Linux user who dislikes both Apple AND Microsoft.
You'll notice that the previous Apple Unicode bug with Arabic text happened at around the same time as the Microsoft bug (2013). My point is that the two large OS corporations seem to be having serious problems dealing with rendering Unicode text, for god knows what reason.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!