“A devastating ‘text bomb’ that crashes Apple devices has been uncovered by researchers,” Tim Collins reports for The Daily Mail. “It works by sending iPhones, iPads and Macs into a frenzy after a malicious web address is opened in Apple’s Message app.”
“The ChaiOS hack, which causes devices to crash and can delete all your messages, affects any device running iOS and Mac OS [sic],” Collins reports. “A fix for the issue, which is not the first text bomb to hit Apple, has not yet been created but is expected in future updates.”
“The flaw was discovered by software developer Abraham Masri, based in Chicago, who shared a link which can be used to crash the app on social media,” Collins reports. “It does so through massively long strings of text information, which overloads the system. Reported effects include freezing, crashes, restarts and resprings, a process which takes about 10 seconds and returns you to the Lock Screen.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As Graham Cluley writes, “Please, please don’t be tempted to try the text bomb attack out on anyone else – you’re not being funny, you’re just being a jerk.”
This isn;t the first and probably not the last. We expect a fix from Apple for this one, too, ASAP.
SEE ALSO:
Three-character message prank crashes pre-iOS 10.2 Apple iPhones with a single text – January 18, 2017
Random string of Arabic characters can crash nearly any Mac, iPhone or iPad – September 3, 2013
So it turns your mac OS or iOS device into Windows 98?
“effects include freezing, crashes, restarts…”
Its really unfortunate it seems that some people with real programming skills have nothing better to do than to find ways to crash computers and other devices..
It takes much less skill to break than to build. If you build a house and I figure out I can toss a rock through a window and break in, that doesn’t make me clever, it just makes me an asshole. You are the smart one. You are the clever one who built something. There are some hackers who are terribly clever, but the vast majority out there are just pushing around data to see if something breaks.
Excellent comment!
If you don’t break it, how can you make it better?
Rhetorically speaking: Then why don’t you provide us with your home address, so that someone can burn down your house? Would love to watch you learn how to build a better one!
/s
No delight at the news…
Maybe the insufferable false sense of security and smugness will finally abate. There’s a security suite in your future.
Sorry Apple, you’ll have yet another reason to spec your cpus higher.
is one hundred percent secure but Apple does do pretty well on security in general. A more closed ecosystem is naturally more secure. Macs already come with security software built into OSX.
True on all counts, in the case of iOS it amounts to the worst of both worlds since it’s still not perfect. A high price to pay for censorship.
I the case of the Mac most users think they aren’t running a security suite, that it’s just magical.
how it works. Just that it works. In the case of the Mac and idevices security works. Both tend to be more secure than alternative choices. I’m not going to debate censorship with you. As Mark Twain said “Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”
“I don’t care how it works”- That’s your right, it also makes you in no position to discuss oh Twainian smart person. Schmuck!
Apple, Welcome to MS Windows world. Oh, and by the way Tim Cook, why does Apple have to put out a new macOS out every year? How about every 2 years or more so you can get rid of the bugs in the previous version??
Yeah
I stole your car.
You left it locked.
You left the windows up.
I broke the window.
Gotta push those archaic social boundaries.
Just being more clever than you.
Queue up the lawsuits…… (Sarcasm)