There’s A Mysterious New ‘Text Bomb’ That’s Suddenly Crashing iPhones With A String Of Characters

iStockphoto / ponsulak

There is a new ‘Text Bomb’ that is causing iPhones to suddenly crash after a series of characters in the is sent/received via Text Message. I remember the last time there was a ‘text bomb’ crashing iPhones and it only affected a small portion of iPhone users but that didn’t stop at least a handful of friends texting it to me to see if it worked. Jerks.

The mysterious message that’s crashing iPhones was first reported by 9to5mac and it’s a series of characters from the Sindhi language accompanied by the Italian flag. They later discovered (in the clip below) that it doesn’t always have to include the Italian flag but the Sindhi characters are a must.

What’s particularly troubling about this ‘Text Bomb’ is it doesn’t just affect a specific device. This is affecting iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Apple Watches according to the reports. In some instances, the device will fully crash and in others it causes the device to stop responding to the user’s touch. Here it is in action:

Here’s another video of what happens when this text message is sent:

It appears to have been fixed in the latest beta update but that isn’t available to everyone yet, furthermore, there was a fix shared on Reddit for people with jailbroken iPhones but that’s available for such a small % of iPhone users I’d doubt there are more than a hundred people with jailbroken iPhones even reading this right now:

The issue does appear to be fixed in the latest iOS 13.4.5 beta, but that update is not available to everyone just yet. Generally, Apple rolls out a fix for these problems quickly, so we should expect iOS 13.4.2 or even iOS 13.4.5 to be released to everyone sooner rather than later.
…
…
A fix on Reddit claims to protect users with a jailbroken device from the bug:
A new string of characters is making the rounds similar to the Telugu text that would cause iOS to crash. CaptureTheFlag is similar in that it hooks CoreText to replace any occurrences of it with “REMOVED.”
You can learn more about this fix in the full Reddit post here. (via 9to5mac)

You know what would be super chill? If I didn’t receive this text message from a bunch of friends later today who all think it’s funny to crash someone’s iPhone. It’s not funny, it’s not chill, it’s just a pain to have to go through the process of restarting your devices.

If you’re super concerned about this ‘Text Bomb’ crashing your Apple devices, Business Insider says you could turn off all notifications from messaging apps across your devices as an extreme precaution.