14 DAY TRIAL // Security researchers are acknowledging a crashing bug caused by a specific string of Arabic characters which affects all apps that rely on Apple’s CoreText API.
A particular string of Arabic characters (pictured above) which doesn’t have any actual meaning can crash any application that uses Apple’s CoreText application programming interface (API) to render text.
Anything from web browsers to Twitter clients, and even Apple’s iMessage app, are affected by the bug. Basically, feeding the string to any of these apps – either by punching in one character at a time, or via copy paste – will crash the app without fail.
The bug has been deemed harmless from a security standpoint (for now), but it can cause trouble for iMessage users. According to Ars Technica, once triggered in iMessage, the bug can “spiral into an extended crash loop [as it gets] displayed each time the user loads previously sent messages.”
Notably, Firefox is not affected by the flaw since it doesn’t rely on CoreText. Same goes for any other app on iOS and OS X that doesn’t use the respective API.