We have previously seen examples of certain combinations of characters crashing your mobile phone for example, when receiving text messages.
Now a new case has appeared a bit in the same street, and this time it is about an error that can prevent your mobile from connecting to the Wifi network. It reports among others the site Bleeping Computer.
Disables Wifi permanently
A security researcher named Carl Schou has discovered a whimsical iOS error that simply blocks access to the Wifi network if it bears a specific network name, or what is called an SSID in the technical language.
Schou, which specializes in so-called reverse engineering, released one before the weekend Twitter message where he writes that his iPhone phone permanently deactivated the Wifi functionality after connecting to his personal Wifi network with the SSID «% p% s% s% s% s% s% n».
According to Schou, it did not help to restart the mobile phone or to change the SSID to restore Wifi access. He attached a short video showing that the Wifi functionality simply can not be turned on.
The security researcher’s test was performed on an iPhone XS with iOS version 14.4.2, and Bleeping Computer performed its own test on an iPhone with iOS 14.6 with the same result.
Requires full reset
The only way to fix the problem is to reset the network settings on the mobile, restart the mobile and then reconfigure the Wifi settings. This is a rather brutal solution, as it deletes all Wifi networks and passwords from the system – in addition to mobile network and VPN settings.
It is unknown at this time what he will do after leaving the post a technical analysis which claims that it is about a so-called «format string bug», which these days is a relatively rare type of error.
The error can be exploited in such a way that malicious actors can set up Wifi hotspots with the relevant SSID in populated areas and in that way interfere with the Internet access for other users. Beyond this, it is limited how exploitable and dangerous the error really is, but the case still illustrates that such vulnerabilities are still present.
The problem should only affect iPhone users and does not seem to affect the Android people. At the time of writing, Apple has not commented on the matter, but will probably release a fix in the near future.
