14 DAY TRIAL // The recently-released iOS 11.4.1 software update includes fixes for a bug hitting iPhone owners in China whose devices could crash every time somebody sent them the word Taiwan or the Taiwan flag emoji.
The bug was caused by a faulty implementation of Apple’s attempt to block the use of the emoji on iPhones sold in China, as per the country’s request given the tension between the two states.
But despite iPhones supposed to show a missing symbol image, receiving the word Taiwan or the said emoji would have crashed any iOS application.
Described in detail by Patrick Wardle in an Objective-See post, the glitch was fixed with the release of Apple’s latest iOS update, technically making the censorship attempt work correctly. In other words, Apple still doesn’t allow Chinese users to send and receive the Taiwan flag emoji, but when receiving it, devices no longer crash, but instead see a missing symbol icon.
Emoji blocked entirely
At this point, the Taiwan flag emoji isn’t showing up on iOS devices with the region set to China, so users in the country cannot send it. On the other hand, when receiving a message containing the word Taiwan of the emoji from someone in a different country, apps no longer crash and instead censor the content.
Wardle says in a technical analysis that users in the US who may see the bug should simply try to change the location to China and then go back to the United States setting to resolve it.
“I'm not 100% sure why (or how this fixed it), but I'm guessing it either set the 'Country' value to 'US' so the boolan flag (at byte_1b1c9bb00) was set now to 0x1, meaning CFStringCompare() was never called....or, that the calls to CFLocaleCopyCurrent()/CFLocaleGetValue() no longer returned NULL, meaning a valid string was passed to CFStringCompare(),” Wardle explains.
Users running older iOS versions are recommended to update to iOS 11.4.1 to avoid crashing apps when the said emoji is sent to their devices.
