Apple iPhones being automatically turned off and iMessage crashing after receiving mysterious text
A random combination of words and characters are automatically shutting down iPhone users' devices.
This is the combo: effective. Power لُلُصّبُلُلصّبُررً ॣ ॣh ॣ ॣ 冗
If a message containing these words and characters is sent via iMessage or SMS it will crash the iPhone, and causes iMessages to crash after being opened.
People are complaining of the problem across social media, prompting widespread reports, but so far no one from Apple has commented on the record.
According to Reddit posters, it is the unicode within the text message.
One poster said: “The unicode in that text goes on indefinitely without stopping. Similar to a badly coded, indefinitely counting counter in JavaScript that causes your browser to crash, this causes messages to take up a lot more memory than normal, leading to iOS killing the largest process, the springboard.”
Another Reddit user warned: "Don't test this on your iPhone 6! I sent it to myself and now my messaging app crashes when I try to open it."
It supposedly affects all iPhones. MacRumors tested the bug on iPhones running iOS 8.3, but said it may also be affecting other versions of iOS.
No one from Apple was available for comment at the time of publication. TechRadar reports that the response it received “suggested Apple can't see the problem on their end”.
One Twitter user said “senior engineers” were aware of the problem.
https://twitter.com/iGadgets__/status/603404524146073602
However there appear to be some fixes available – the below video claims to offer a fix. But quite frankly, we're not taking the risk…