chaiOS bug: A simple iMessage text can freeze your iPhone

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by Anmol Mehrotra 

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After fixing the horrifying vulnerabilities named Spectre and Meltdown, a new vulnerability has been discovered that impacts iMessage running on iOS devices only. This flaw will lead to your device not responding and even rebooting in several cases. This was first spotted by Abraham Masri, he said :

https://twitter.com/cheesecakeufo/status/953401511429726210

As noted by Masri, the reason behind this flaw is that the linked contains thousands of metacharacters that iMessage has issues in reading. Hence, when this URL is received by any iOS user, it tries to load the preview and hence causes the crash. And if you find this link on WhatsApp, Viber or other IM applications please do NOT open it. Also, try to block that URL in Safari to keep your device safe.

You are affected by this bug if your device runs iOS 10.0 through 11.2.5 Beta 5 and some macOS computers. Nevertheless, this issue is fixed in iOS 11.2.5 Beta 6 what we await is for the fix to roll out on the stable channel soon.

Anmol Mehrotra

Anmol Mehrotra Shield

Android and Windows News Reporter

Anmol covers Android and Windows news. He's a tech writer with over a decade of experience.

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