Recently discovered, a special four-character string can cause iPhones to crash due to a harmless bug found in iOS and iPadOS.
The bug affects SpringBoard, the underlying app managing home screens on iPhones and iPads. Simply entering “”:: in specific search bars within iOS and iPadOS can cause apps to crash in various ways.
For example, typing the string in the search bars of the Settings and Notes apps will lead to them crashing and returning the user to the home screen.
Entering the same string in the search field of the App Library, accessed by swiping to the far right of the home screen, will cause iOS to undergo a soft crash with a black screen and a spinning wheel before returning to the lock screen.
El Reg tested the above scenarios, and all resulted in the described crashes. Testing across Apple’s native apps and search fields confirmed that this specific string was the only trigger for crashes.
Additionally, inserting “”: and any additional fourth character or adding any character between the quotation marks and after the first colon can also lead to crashes.
Security researcher Patrick Wardle examined an iOS crash report to understand the issue further. He confirmed to TechCrunch, the bug was not malicious and could not be exploited for malicious intent.
This bug is not as severe as previous text-based bugs, like the 2018 text bomb that could freeze a device by just sending a text with the recipient’s phone number.
Some users likened this bug to the second iteration of Effective Power, referencing a similar text bug in 2015 that caused devices to reboot. This followed a 2013 bug that crashed apps with a five-character string, prompting Facebook to ban it from being posted.
El Reg reached out to Apple for comment, but no immediate response was received. ®
