Malicious Link Texted to Mac and iOS Devices Can Cause Freezes and Resprings [Updated]

Tuesday January 16, 2018 5:16 PM PST by Juli Clover
A link that exploits a bug in iOS and Mac devices was shared on Twitter this afternoon, and if you receive this link through the Messages app, your iPhone or iPad can freeze up or respring, and the Messages app can become unusable.

The link, which goes to a Github page, breaks the Messages app and causes problems on both iOS devices and Macs. Simply receiving the link results in issues, likely due to the Messages feature that lets you preview web links. We tested the bad link and while we saw few resprings, it did reliably cause the Messages app to freeze entirely.


The only solution appears to be to quit out of the Messages app and then delete the entire offending conversation to restore full functionality.

These kinds of Message-based bugs have surfaced several times in the past, with text strings, videos, and more crashing the Messages app in the past. Such bugs are not serious, but they can be highly irritating when abused as a prank.

It's best not to send the link to friends, because it can cause the sending device to freeze up and crash as well. If your device is affected, quit the Messages app on Mac or iOS, open it back up, and immediately delete the entire message thread.

On Mac, you'll need to swipe right on the trackpad or right click on to the person's name to delete the conversation, while on iOS, you'll need to swipe to the right on a person's name to bring up the delete option.


Blocking the domain using Parental Restrictions may prevent the link from affecting your iOS devices. You can turn on Restrictions on iPhone or iPad by going to Settings --> General --> Restrictions --> Websites --> Limit Adult Content and adding "GitHub.io" to the "Never Allow" list.

Update: Apple appears to have addressed the bug in iOS 11.2.5 beta 6, and Github has removed the offending webpage.

51 comments

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Porco
25 months ago
IMHO, Apple should offer an option to specifically turn off web link previews, regardless of this bug.
Rating: 23 Votes
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Naraxus
25 months ago
Does anyone remember when stuff like this happened to Microsoft and NOT Apple? My how times have changed.
Rating: 17 Votes
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Princess Cake
25 months ago

M$ still sucks, and Apple is still better.


Remember what Steve said "We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win Microsoft has to lose. In order for Apple to win Apple needs to do a really good job."
Rating: 15 Votes
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Princess Cake
25 months ago
O̖̟̝̦h ̱l͉̰͓ooḳ,̩̗̱ ̩͓̘͔t͕͚h̬̰̗̘̣̙͔e̝̮̯̟͍ ̗̖͔̣k̗̩̩̳͓̜͔i͚d͎̯̭s̭̙̣ ̟̫̳a̞ṛ̩̮̪̣͚e͚̰̺͔̭ ̟̜̥̖͇͓̝u̱̠s̬̯̥̳̲̠in̪̲g̜̣̝̦ ͓t̬̞hḙ̳̣ ͇͙̗͈̺̮͓g̠̱̣̭̦͕͓ḽḭ̞̘t̩c̤͎h̺̬͕̜̘̲y̞͉̘ t͔̥̰e͙̭͇̼̱̹x̙̠t̜͇̝̹ͅͅ ͔̞̠̱ge͚n̗e͍̦̝̺r̦͓a͇̳̣t͖̦̱͔̤̙o͓̭̗̹̤̜̼r͔͙̗̬̞̼͚:rolleyes:
Rating: 14 Votes
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shamino
25 months ago
So does anyone have a clue what this page is actually doing? I tried loading it in Firefox and the browser got really slow (displaying assorted cruft at the bottom of the browser window) until I closed the tab.

Update

After viewing the page's source code, it's just ugly nonsense exploiting a bug in the browser.

The page's header has a meta tag (og.title (http://ogp.me/)) where the content is several MB of text, consisting mostly of Unicode cascading accent marks. Following by a "mailto" URL containing similar junk. The content causes most software (capable of displaying Unicode, of course) to slow down a lot.

Pretty juvenile. But iOS's Mobile Safari and Messages shouldn't crash in the face of this. This may indicate a more serious bug somewhere in Apple's Unicode rendering engine.

IMO, although it probably violates the standard, I think software should put a limit on the number of cascading accents one may attach to a single character. If there were a limit of 100 (for example), it would probably never interfere with legitimate text and text designed to abuse the feature would simply fail to render. The only people offended would be those trying to write browser-crashing text and a few uber-pedantic Unicode geeks.
Rating: 10 Votes
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Paradoxally
25 months ago
Apple is lost. This is the effective power bug all over again.
Rating: 10 Votes
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TiggrToo
25 months ago

I remember someone recently talking about Apple's class leading security? These stories seem to be appearing almost daily.


And, pray tell just how is this a security issue? :confused:

It's a bug - shock horror. Is it annoying? Absolutely. Should the user be forced to take these mitigation steps? Probably not. That said, mitigation is at hand and can be deployed easily by the user or a friend.

At the least this should be a wake up call to have Apple allow users to block any domain they want from Previews in the next release without resorting to turning on Adult Block mode.

That said, it's a user visible bug in an ever increasingly complex operating system running on a device infinitely more* powerful than the computers we used to send man to the moon on.

And whilst I'm on it...

Never ceased to be amazed at the rampaging hordes of folk screaming out lines such as 'Apple's lost it's way', 'IOS n is the buggiest ever' ,'Sue sue SUE!' all stated by idiots who've blithely forgotten about yesterday's issues and focus instead on today, oblivious to the ever increased complexity of a smartphone operating system and how much we expect it to do today than we ever did just a couple of years back.

Nope, these folk - apparently all of them highly qualified software engineers all, know more about software design than software engineers do, and, as a result, feel the job they do is shoddy and unacceptable.

Yet, very very few of them I'd warrant, have ever worked on a complex software application, yet alone on an operating system firmware or a kernel.

Everyone's a critic... :rolleyes:

* a little bit of hyperbole in the morning can go a long way!
Rating: 9 Votes
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TMRJIJ
25 months ago
Sigh... (waits fifteen minutes for everyone in the CS Department to start sending this link to each other)
Rating: 9 Votes
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Quu
25 months ago
Another day another exploitable issue with iOS/macOS. Apple really needs to double down on platform security because this is getting ridiculous.
Rating: 9 Votes
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Princess Cake
25 months ago

It's still the most advanced secure platform. Be grateful for that while you do some blue-collar job. FYI, Bugs usually got fixed when found out. While there are positions there at Apple just to find bugs, there's occasionally a bug like these...


To be fair theres positions at Apple to get high and naked while going off on a spirit journey to find the name of the next version of macOS.
Rating: 6 Votes
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