Four characters discovered that when entered, temporarily crashes the iPhone UI and apps
Security researcher Konstantin has reported a phenomenon in which iPhones and iPads temporarily crash when just four specific characters are entered.
Typing these four characters could crash your iPhone | TechCrunch
According to Konstantin, when you enter the characters '::' in the search bar of 'Settings' to perform a Spotlight search, Springboard, the iPhone's home screen interface, crashes and the software restarts.
This phenomenon has been confirmed in iOS 17 and the beta version of iOS 18, so I tried it out. The iOS version of the iPhone I'm using is 18.0 Beta, and the search bar in 'Settings' is at the top.
Let's try entering ''::'. I was able to enter the first three characters without any problems.
However, when I typed the fourth character, the Settings app crashed, forced me to close, and returned me to the home screen.
Although we were unable to reproduce the issue on our iPhone, TechCrunch confirmed that the issue sometimes returned the device to the lock screen, or sometimes went black for about a second, and sometimes crashed when using the search bar in the app library.
'The bug that causes the app to crash when you type this character does not appear to be a security issue,' Konstantin and iOS security researcher Patrick Wardle said.
Apple did not comment when contacted by TechCrunch, but Apple news site MacRumors predicts that the issue will be addressed in an update soon.
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