At some point you really do have to sit down and wonder how on EARTH someone figured out that this was a thing.
As much as we all love our smartphones and iOS’s and whatnot, and for all the research and development and constant updates Apple keeps putting out, the technology isn’t perfect.
Case in point, some intrepid young someone with an extensive knowledge of Unicode and way, way, way too much time on their hands has discovered an extremely specific string of characters that, when texted to someone’s iPhone, will cause their phone to crash and reset.
Internet dredging boat Reddit spread word of the unique bug, and have come up with a range of theories as to why it does what it does.
The primary theory is that the iPhone’s notification bar has trouble displaying this particular line of characters, and so as not to completely crash the system, the iOS resets the phone as a self-preservation measure. This also means that the message doesn’t have to actually be opened for the bug to work, it just needs to be received by the other phone.
The offending message is largely nonsense, and features the words “effective.” and “Power” along with a string of Arabic characters, and one Japanese character.
If you do happen to be on the receiving end of one of these today, there’s three fixes being bandied about the internet. The first being go into your phone’s settings and go Notifications > Messages > and turn off Show on Lock Screen.
The second fix if your iMessage keeps crashing is to go into your photos and send a random photo to the person who sent you the offending message, then open iMessage and delete the bug text. And finally, the third is to get Siri to send a message for you, and then delete the shitty text.
Apple has only made the statement “We are aware of an iMessage issue caused by a specific series of unicode characters, and we will make a fix available in a software update” available so far. But a solution to the issue is more than likely on the way.
‘Course when that arrives we’ll probably already have another two or three ways to screw with people. It’s the circle of trolling, and it moves us all.
via CNN Money.
