Short Bytes: A new iPhone crashing exploit is here to take down and break your iMessages app. Hacker Vincedes3 has uncovered a hack that overloads your phone’s vCard that’s used for exchanging contact information. The hacker has also shared some fixes, which can be found on his blog.
he iPhone text message crashes are becoming increasingly common these days. Back in November, we told you about a creepy video link that crashed any iPhone in seconds. Thanks to a new hack in town, all Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, or iPod) running iOS 8 or later are vulnerable to crash.
This hack was discovered by hacker Vincedes3. It was also covered by the popular YouTuber EverythingApplePro who tried and tested it on multiple devices.
Disclaimer: The information shared ahead is just for educational purposes. Fossbytes isn’t responsible if it breaks your device.
Here’s the iPhone text message crash in action:
How does iPhone Messages app crash work?
Basically, the message shown here contains lots of text. When it’s loaded by iOS, it freezes the app. As you close the app and reopen it, iOS again tries to fetch the message and fails. Thus, the exploit works on the principle that iOS always tries to open the most recently opened text.
This is done by overloading the vCard, which is used to exchange contact information, with lots of data. The exploit uses a contact with about 14,281 lines of code, which is about 70 times the code found in an average vCard.
In his blog post, the hacker has detailed the exploit and instructions. If you’re willing to give it a try, do so at your peril.
A new hack, discovered by hacker Vincedes3, can crash and disable the Messages app on any device running iOS 8 through to iOS 10. The revelation was made popular by YouTuber EverythingApplePro, who uploaded a video presenting the exploit’s destructive impacts. Additionally, Vincedes3 has documented the exploit on his own channel.
The exploit works by overloading a vCard – typically used to exchange contact information between devices – with thousands of lines of code to such an extent that the Messages app freezes and cannot process any further information. Messages subsequently crashes. Vincedes3 has reportedly included 14,281 lines of code in the vCard file, working out at roughly 70 times the amount of code found in the average vCard.
The exploit is particularly destructive in that restarting the Messages app, or even the iPhone, is ineffective, unless the owner looks to Vincedes3’s blog post for a solution.
Along with access to a copy of the vCard, Vincedes3 has thankfully detailed multiple ways of restoring the iOS device to normal. The exploit works on the premise that Apple’s iOS will always try to open the most recently opened text. By sending yourself a message and then opening it via Siri, the exploit will move down the list of messages and become ineffective. Alternatively, the hacker has supplied a link which can be opened in Safari to restore the iOS device to normal.
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