Apple has confirmed that a fix for a recently discovered bug that causes apps like Messages to crash on iPhone, iPad, and Mac has been included in iOS 11.3, macOS 10.13.4, watchOS 4.3, and tvOS 11.3, updates that are currently being beta tested ahead of a release this spring.
Furthermore, Apple told iMore's Rene Ritchie that the bug will also be addressed in an upcoming iOS update that will be released in the near future, ahead of iOS 11.3, so customers won't need to wait several weeks for a fix. Minor updates for other operating systems will likely come at the same time.
The bug, induced by sending a specific character in the Indian language Telugu, causes certain apps on iPhones, iPads, and Macs to freeze up and become unresponsive. Messages, Safari, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and other apps that accept text input are all affected.
When the character is sent in an iMessage, for example, it can freeze up the entire Messages app on all of a person's Mac and iOS devices. The Messages app will then refuse to function properly until the offending character is removed by deleting the conversation with the person who sent it.
In some situations, if the character is viewed through an iOS notification, it can cause the entire device to crash, resulting in a re-spring or worse.
Apple users who have received a message with the character will, as mentioned above, need to delete the Messages conversation with the person who sent the character. Alternatively, installing the iOS 11.3 or macOS 10.13.4 betas will fix the problem.
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Top Rated Comments
(View all)So assume a test sequence length of 3: 2,557,582,440,568,875 combinations.
And testing for 3 characters wouldn't have found that specific problem. The crashing character consists of 5 codepoints.U+0C1C [Lo] TELUGU LETTER JA
U+0C4D [Mn] TELUGU SIGN VIRAMA
U+0C1E [Lo] TELUGU LETTER NYA
U+200C [Cf] ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER
U+0C3E [Mn] TELUGU VOWEL SIGN AA
If you could test 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 combinations per second testing all possible characters that consist of 5 codepoints would still take 1.5 years.
And testing for characters consisting of 5 codepoint still won't be enough. The family emoji for example is actually a sequence of 7 codepoints. Woman + Zero Width Joiner (ZWJ) + Woman + ZWJ + Girl + ZWJ + Boy.
Unicode isn't like in the old times (like ASCII for example), where we had a direct 1:1 mapping between a codepoint and a character to render. Testing all Unicode combinations just won't work.
What nose-picker adult living in their mom’s basement discover this bug?
Actually it was discovered by an Italian developer. There have to be at least a couple of million Indians using iOS by now. Why didn’t they scream bloody murder immediately?[doublepost=1518728203][/doublepost]
This seems like a recurring semi-weekly occurrence. Maybe it's time to dump Messages and rewrite it from scratch with safe coding practices.
Maybe time for you to switch platforms and be happy. But then there’s the serious Skype bug that Microsoft says is too much trouble to fix right now, and all the Android flaws that will never be patched because the carriers don’t care.