Discovered a dangerous bug on the iPhone: just receive a message with a particular symbol to lock the smartphone
A message to lock the iPhone: this is the discovery made in recent hours by a user on Reddit (social network widely used by the geek world), which has created a thread in which he told his experience. After receiving a message with a very strange text, the smartphone froze and stopped working. To solve the problem you need to start the manual DFU mode and restore the iPhone.
A rather annoying problem that has already claimed many victims in the past. A few years ago, in fact, a very similar bug was discovered: a message containing a very strange letter was enough to lock the iPhone, forever. In that case, in fact, not even starting DFU mode was needed to restart the smartphone. The message is traveling across all messaging platforms: iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook Messenger and Instagram's Direct Message. Fortunately, there is already a solution to the problem: in the iOS 13.4.5 version (for the moment only available in beta), the bug seems to be fixed and those who receive the message do not end up with a locked iPhone.
The message that crashes the iPhone
Reading the thread on Reddit, there are conflicting theories about the message. According to the person who discovered the bug, the offending message consists of an Italian flag emoji plus a Telugu language character. It seems that the Dravidian character is crashing the iPhone, and the presence of the Italian flag emoji is completely coincidental.
EverythingApplePro, one of the leading experts in the Apple world, has also posted a video on Twitter that actually demonstrates how the bug works: just receive the message on a messaging app to lock the iPhone. And in the video you can clearly see that in the message he received there is no Italian flag..
Why does the iPhone freeze?
The problem is the "particular" character in the message. Most likely the iPhone doesn't support the Telugu language character and as soon as you receive the message, the smartphone can't decipher it and crashes.
How to defend yourself from the message that crashes your iPhone
The bug seems to have been fixed with iOS version 13.4.5, available for the moment only in beta. Apple, however, seems to be aware of the bug and would be ready to release an update very soon to fix the problem.
Until the software update is available, pay close attention to all the messages you receive, even from close friends. There's always someone ready to play tricks.
If you accidentally opened the message and your iPhone crashed, the only way is to start manual DFU mode. How to do that? You have to connect the smartphone to the Mac, turn off the iPhone and press and hold the power and home button simultaneously for 10 seconds.
Then release the power button and keep pressing the home button until the restore mode starts.
On the iPhoen X and later the procedure is slightly different: you have to press and release the "Volume Up" key first and then "Volume Down". Then press the Side button on the right and then press and hold the Slide and Volume Down buttons simultaneously for 5 seconds.