A new iPhone warning has been issued by a security researcher, after he found a bug that causes Apple devices to crash. All you need to do is type the four characters “”:: into your iPhone or iPad, according to TechCrunch, which first reported the bug.
“Apparently, you can crash your [Apple mobile user interface] iPhone Springboard pretty easily,” security researcher Konstantin wrote on social networking site Mastodon.
“On your iPhone, swipe left past all your Home Screen pages to get to App Library. Then search for “”::,” he added. “Do at your own risk.”
When the bug is triggered, it crashes your iPhone’s Springboard and then reloads to the Lock Screen. In some cases, the screen flashes black first.
The bug crashes iPhones when the characters are typed into the Search bar in the Settings app, as well as when you swipe all the way to the right on your home screen and type the characters into the App Library search bar.
On closer inspection, iPhone users realized the bug could be triggered by someone typing three characters “”: followed by any other character.
Apple has been contacted for a comment and I will update this article if the firm replies.
The only way of triggering the bug is on the device—the user needs to manually type the characters into their iPhone in order to activate the crash. That means it’s not a security risk, rather an annoyance if you manage to type the specific sequence in by mistake.
With this in mind, there’s not much you can do, other than to be very careful what you type into your iPhone and wait for Apple to issue a fix. And it looks like another iPhone update is coming ahead of iOS 18 arriving next month, which could squash this bug alongside other issues and security flaws.
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