Published in Mobiles

Text an iPhone to death

by on27 May 2015


Security was not expecting an SMS

Jobs' Mob security hit another low point this week after it was revealed that it forgot that hackers can use SMS to take down a phone.

Perhaps it was because they thought that no one uses SMS these days, or Apple fanboys have alienated all their friends and would never receive one, neverthereless such a hole exists.

Apple has announced that it is working for a fix for the bug, but it is not saying when. Given that these were the same knights of the rounded rectangle that failed to spot the flaw in the first place we would not hold your breath.

The crafted SMS text crashes the iPhone, or locks the user out of the messaging application.

The Verge said that it was able to crash the iPhone to an extent, but explained that the attack was mitigated by replying to the sender or deleting the message via a Mac computer if it was an iMessage.

The message is a mix of characters and text, and has been shared by a number of people. Twitter yields a large number of comments relating to, and complaining about, the attack.

The Tame Apple Press claims that it does have some impact on iPhone users, but does not appear to be catastrophic, because everyone can buy a new phone.

Apparently 9to5Macreported that a request to Siri will restore the phone.

You would think Apple would have learnt. This is not the first time such a problem has plagued iOS users. The iOS 8.2 update fixed a malicious SMS attack using Flash.

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