Earlier this week, a reddit user revealed a glitch in the latest iOS software that allows anyone to send a message that will remotely shut down an iPhone or other Apple mobile device.
The “Unicode of Death” message is a string of arabic looking characters that causes the iPhone to shut down after the message is opened. The reddit user cbhunt14 posted about it late Tuesday night, and Apple has released a way around the bug.
Apple told CNBC that the bug would be fixed in the next iOS software update, but until then they released these steps as a method to temporarily solve the problem if you receive the message.
1. Ask Siri to “read unread messages.”
2. Use Siri to reply to the malicious message. After you reply, you’ll be able to open Messages again.
3. In Messages, swipe left to delete the entire thread. Or tap and hold the malicious message, tap More, and delete the message from the thread.
According to the Mac user site, cultofmac.com (click to see a picture of the buggy unicode), it’s not that iPhone can’t handle arabic characters, but rather: “The issue comes from the Unicode at the end of the message which, according to some users, decodes to an infinitely repeating message that overloads your iPhone’s memory and causes it to wig out.”
Some other fixes to the problem, according to Wednesday’s cultofmac.com article, include sending a picture from the picture app through text message, replying through Siri (as Apple suggests), and going in to Settings–>Notifications–>Messages–> and turning off the “show preview” button as well as turning off “show on lock screen”.
Reports of the fixes that actually work are scattered. Some of these fixes work for some users, while others do not. Both Android and Apple users can send the ill-willed message, so if you have been a victim of this trollish prank you may have to try multiple methods before finding one that works.
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