Text Bomb Can Crash iDevices

A potentially serious new bug has been detected which can affect a wide range of Apple devices. Software engineers at Aloha Browser discovered two Unicode symbols in a non-English language that can crash any Apple device that uses Apple’s default San Francisco font. The bug instigates crashes on iPhones, iPads, Macs and even Watch OS devices that display text containing the symbol on their screens. When one of the two symbols is displayed in an app, the software crashes immediately. In many cases, the app cannot be reopened and must be reinstalled. TechCrunch was able to recreate this behavior on two iPhones running an older version of iOS, one iPhone running iOS 11.2.5 and a MacBook Pro running High Sierra. Apple is yet to release a software fix. This is Apple’s second text bomb headache of the year. In January, software researcher Abraham Masri discovered an iOS glitch that allowed a specific URL to crash any iPhone it was texted to, sometimes resulting in a kernel panic.