CONTEXT:
Apple is considered as the most secure and reliable support system that has been crushed down by a language text. According to the recent, Security personnel has confirmed that Apple devices are exposed to a “text bomb” attack were simply looking at messages or posts containing characters in the Sindhi language that can crash devices. The faulted language characters can crash services running on iPhones and other iOS/macOS devices. If a victim tries to views texts, Instagram posts, or Whatsapp messages, mobile crashes, and works only after a reboot.
How did Apple acknowledge the attack?
The bug was first reported on iOS 13.4.1, the latest version of Apple’s mobile OS. This OS version is merely affected and can crash an iPhone or iPad via an app notification with a particular string of characters in the Sindhi language.
Sindhi is an official language used in the Indian subcontinent. The bug spotted on Apple merchandise such as iPhone, iPad, Macs, and Apple Watches, are failing to properly interpret a Unicode symbol used when drafting in the language. The Sindhi Unicode symbol obscures the operating systems.
According to a Friday post from researcher Graham Cluley at Bitdefender, the devices simply spontaneously crash when it shows up in a viewing window.
The problem befalls in several different situations, including if the character string shows up in a text message. In fact, just staring at the message notification panel carrying a message preview will crash down the operating system. Inspecting messages within apps drives to the same result, as does recite social media posts on one’s phone or Mac. As for the recent point, researchers were able to autonomously confirm that looking at tweets containing the characters will certainly shut down an iPhone. As a result it was noted that that simply rebooting the device fixes the problem. The problem was first reported on Reddit on Thursday, and given the name as “CapturetheFlag” because the annoying encoded characters are usually paired with the Italian flag. Although, the flag is not necessarily responsible to trigger a crash. Encoded messages began to circulate in Telegram messages and instantly went viral on Twitter, with several pranksters attempting to post tweets comprising the text-bomb content. later on, it concluded that the circulated messages were fake and were taken down by the concerned authority.
Similar Apple Text bugs:
Every language and emoji are interpreted to the language compiler with the help of a special Unicode character encoding standard. Text-bomb attacks have been evolving over the years. Apple had faced similar semantic issues in 2013, certain sequences, order keys of Arabic characters were found to crash Macs and iPhone. While another similar problem aroused in 2018, messages containing letters of the south Indian language of Telugu were discovered to do the same thing as it is happening now. Then, The problem was fixed by a linguistic language update pushed on apple devices.
The same year chaiOS bug in 2018 for example allowed Intruders to freeze and crash the phones just by conveying a text message pop up containing a hyperlink redirected to malicious code hosted on GitHub. And Similar bug was reported last year, Apple iMessage bug was configured to allow attackers to brick iPhones running on versions of older iOS, by sending a particularly crafted message to a vulnerable device.
DAMAGE CONTROL!
The renowned Tech portal notebookcheck.net proclaimed that iOS 13.4.5 resembles having fixed the issue but the operating system is still in beta phase and will not be available to most users for quite some time.
Though, it is tricky as to why iOS struggles with a text bomb while Android doesn’t seem to have a problem with the same message. Each time Apple concludes one text bomb, another pops up after a year or two.
According to Officials, the latest beta version of iOS fixes the issue. So to incorporate the fix for this problem, Apple has decided to push an update to encounter the bug. Meanwhile, if you are worried or think you might be targeted by an intruder who enchants in shattering your device, you might be careful to disable message previews on your iPhone.Besides, Android users can meanwhile treat this one as a win in the mobile device wars because this text bomb attack does not affect the Android devices. Google’s OS still remains untouched.
