A single character can bug an iphone and block your access to your iOS messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Outlook for iOS and Gmail.
First spotted by an Italian blog “Blog Mobile World”, this new bug with potentially serious consequences affects not only iPhones but also a wide range of Apple devices such as iPads, Macs and even Apple watches running on latest versions of Apple operating system.
Like the previous “text bombs”, this new flaw can be easily exploited by anyone, it suffices to send only a single letter of the alphabet of the Telugu language, an Indian language spoken by 70 million people. in India.
Once the recipient receives or types a message containing this symbol, the Telugu character immediately triggers a crash on iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple Watches, and Apple TVs running on the Apple Springboard operating system.
Applications that received this “text bomb” then try to load the character, but they fail and stop functioning normally until the character is deleted. To do this, it is generally sufficient to delete the entire conversation.
The easiest way to clear the culprit message is to have someone message you on the app affected by the “text bomb”. This will allow you to go directly to your notifications and completely erase the discussion thread containing the culprit of the bug.
The character can block third-party applications like iMessage, Slack, Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Gmail, Outlook for iOS but also Safari and Messages for the iOS version.
However, Telegram and Skype applications are not affected by this bug.