Pinoy Hack News – PHN
iPhone and iOS users may find themselves in a bit of a bind over a nonsensical text message.
Apple has confirmed that a bug involving the native iMessage or Messages, and other messaging apps, especially when its preview notifications are turned on. This occurs when a specific set of Unicode characters are sent to the phone, reportedly from any device. It causes messaging apps to crash until a new message is sent by the original sender. If the phone is on lock screen and the message is received, it may cause a the phone to crash or reboot without any warnings. No definite cause has been determined as to why the bug occurs but other security sites and blogs have speculated that this can be because of how the app displays and handles Arabic characters.
A lot of people on Internet forums are currently discussing the bug and have been discussing possible solutions for the fix. Others in these forums stated they have been pranked by their friends and are venting the frustration over the bug.
Apple is reportedly working on a fix but no definite date has been set for its release.
One way to prevent from being bugged is to switch of preview notifications from any messaging app on the iOS device. If the device is already affected by the error, the only solution is to have the “bug” message be deleted or overwritten from the device. There are various fixes recommended here for different scenarios.
[Source: Engadget, CNN, The AppleByte] [Image Credits: pcpro.uk]
