iPhone Bug Freezes Your Phone With Just One Link -- Security Today

iPhone Bug Freezes Your Phone With Just One Link

The chaiOS bug can freeze or restart your phone without even having to click the link.

By Sydny Shepard
Jan 19, 2018

Imagine receiving a text from someone, you open the thread and see the text is actually a link. Before you even click on the link, your phone freezes up or restarts, throwing you into a panic. Unfortunately, this can happen. It is the exact bug software developer Abraham Masri found in iPhones this past week.

Masri announced the bug, which he aptly named "chaiOS," on his Twitter account and explain that it exploits the fact that iMessages preloads any links to webpages so it can show users a preview of the page. In an interview with Buzzfeed News, Masri explained that he create a webpage hosed on GitHub and stuffed its metadata with hundreds of thousands of unnecessary characters causing your phone to crash when trying to load all of the unexpected information, sometimes taking the entire operating system down with it.

In other news, I found a (small) bug that causes device to freeze, respring, drains battery, and/or sometimes panic.
No need to install anything. Just open, tap then paste. (iOS only).https://t.co/4PxjA6oqiy
thanks to @aaronp613 @garnerlogan65 @lepidusdev @brensalsa for testing
— Abraham Masri (@cheesecakeufo) January 16, 2018

Initially, Masri had posted a link that used the chaiOS in a Tweet on his account, but the page, and a few others that mirror the bug, has since been taken down by the host site. Masri said he isn't going to re-upload the bug, saying he only released it to "get Apple's attention."

No, I'm not going to re-upload it. I made my point. Apple needs to take such bugs more seriously.
— Abraham Masri (@cheesecakeufo) January 17, 2018

Apple has announced they will release a fix for the bug next week.

About the Author

Sydny Shepard is the Executive Editor of Campus Security & Life Safety.

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