the culprit
During their development work on an international news feed, 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.
the victims
The bug crashes apps like Mail, Twitter, Messages, Slack, Instagram and Facebook. While it initially appeared that the Chrome browser for Mac was unaffected and could safely display the symbol, it later crashed Chrome and the software would not reopen without crashing until uninstalled and reinstalled.
the trolls
Once the news hit general public, hordes of trolls went on to social media to play pranks on apple users by posting the killer glyphs on social media. Tricksters can use it as a social handle or send messages to crash the vulnerable devices. It's also reported that someone took down temporarily some Uber drivers by posting it as a handle in profile. Basically you can weaponise it in many ways. Seems to "work" on apps the send notifications, also websites.
the tricks
The new text bomb can be used to create mass chaos if spammed across an open social platform or used to target individuals via email or messaging. Twitter folks have posted few quite destructive ideas e.g posting it as a public hotspot name and go to apple store, set it as your local wifi ssid. Or you can just send as a text message to play a prank on people who own apple devices. It's also reported that someone took down temporarily some Uber drivers by posting it as a handle in profile. Basically you can weaponise it in many ways. Seems to "work" on apps the send notifications, also websites (e.g a post to a youtube video where it was used in the title crashed my browser immediately)
The new bug affects a broad swath of Apple devices and crashes nearly any major app they run, making it particularly destructive if not resolved quickly.
For the sake of not crashing anyone, I will not post the killer glyphs here. Stay cool and hopefully it will be patched out in the coming security patch.
Peace out!
sources: techcrunch, twitter / image: pixabay cc
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