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Text String Can Cause iOS to Crash

posted by cmn32480 on Friday May 29 2015, @10:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the i-wanna-text-it-to-all-my-apple-loving-friends dept.

iOS bug causes crash when rendering certain text string

darkfeline writes:

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

AndyTheAbsurd writes:

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.

 
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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by pkrasimirov on Friday May 29 2015, @11:13AM

    by pkrasimirov (3358) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 29 2015, @11:13AM (#189608)

    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.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2015, @12:30PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2015, @12:30PM (#189632)

    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:

    • The shortening generating invalid Unicode
    • Trying to display the invalid Unicode causing a crash
    • The crash escalating to OS level

    • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Saturday May 30 2015, @06:34AM

      by Geotti (1146) on Saturday May 30 2015, @06:34AM (#190000) Journal

      However, a respring is not a reboot. Springboard is the desktop, so to speak, and not the OS. Still annoying, though.