Back in 2015, hackers discovered the “Effective Power” bug, where texting ““effective. Power لُلُصّبُلُلصّبُررً ॣ ॣh ॣ ॣ 冗,” crashed any iPhone that received the string. Apple quickly fixed the bug and of course, nothing ever went wrong with an Apple product again. Except, uh, the exact same thing has happened, this time in the form of a link that its discoverer is calling “chaiOS.”
All you have to do is text a Github link to the phone, and that’s that. It appears the bug works the same way similar problems have in the past; when you text a link, Apple’s message program attempts to open the link in the background for easy access, overwhelming the app. It appears this applies across platforms, as well. The good news is that this is just annoying and won’t damage your phone. It can be fixed either by deleting the text thread and starting a new one, or by going into your settings and blocking certain sites.
That said, it does illustrate a problem Apple just cannot seem to contain. When hackers are opening sites like “CrashSafari.com” to underscore your inability to create a stable system, it’s an issue. Apple’s response, apparently, was to get the code yanked from the internet, but that’s, at best, a short-term solution.
(via 9to5 Mac)