Apple today confirmed reports of an iMessage-based bug that can cause iPhones to crash.
“We are aware of an iMessage issue caused by a specific series of unicode characters and we will make a fix available in a software update,” said Apple to Reuters.
The SMS message is in Arabic which includes symbols, and the spammers are exploiting a glitch in the way Apple’s iOS renders Arabic text. The bug will crash the iMessage app itself, and can crash the phone as well.
As of this afternoon, mobile security provider AdaptiveMobile has blocked attempts to send a quarter of a million messages in North America.
Sending a reply message or having someone send you a message can solve the problem
Apple didn’t say how soon the bug fix might be made available.
