News JVTech If you type these 4 characters in order, your iPhone will crash and go haywire. Don’t do this at home
Published on 08/24/2024 at 5:20 p.m.
Share :
Who knew that typing 4 simple characters on your iPhone could ruin everything?
iPhones in danger?
We’re in the middle of the iOS 18 beta period, and while there are plenty of bugs ahead of the final release in September with the iPhone 16, this week a new, unrelated software issue was identified by a security researcher on Mastodon. The bug, which occurs when you type a specific four-character sequence, can cause your device to crash. The string in question is “”: followed by any fourth character.
To fully understand the severity and impact of this discovery, it is important to look at the context in which it was discovered. Mastodon is a decentralized social network, which is increasingly used by cybersecurity experts to share their findings. It is precisely on this platform that a researcher published his observations on this bug.
According to tests carried out by specialist sites such as 9to5Mac and TechCrunch, This bug mainly affects Spotlight search functionality and App Library on iOS 17. It causes the Springboard, the iPhone’s home screen interface, to crash, leading to a “soft” reboot of the device.
It is important to note that This issue does not appear to be a major security flaw. There is, as of yet, no evidence that anyone other than the device owner can trigger this bug, unlike previous bugs like the infamous “Effective Power.”
Why such a bug on the iPhone?
Now let’s get down to business: what exactly happens when these characters are entered, and what are the implications? When you type “”: followed by a fourth character in the Spotlight search bar or App Library, the iPhone is unable to process this sequence correctly. This causes Springboard to crash, restarting the UI without completely rebooting the device.
Testing on different versions of iOS shows that this bug is not uniformly present. On iOS 18 and iOS 18.1, For example, Spotlight search freezes briefly, but Springboard doesn’t crash completely. This suggests that the bug may be related to specific variations between different versions of the operating system. For my part, following along on iOS 18 with an iPhone 15 Pro, I haven’t been able to reproduce the phenomenon.
This phenomenon is not completely new on iOS. In 2015, the “Effective Power” bug had caused similar disruptions, but with more serious consequences since it allowed third parties to remotely crash an iPhone. In the current case, the bug seems less dangerous, but it is still annoying for users.
Apple has yet to officially comment on the discovery, but the company is usually quick to fix these types of issues via software updates. In the meantime, users are strongly advised to avoid typing these characters into Spotlight search or the App Library; just in case…
