Circulating five-second video causes Apple iPhones to freeze
iPhone owners are cautioned to be careful about tapping unsolicited links as a new five-second MP4 video, currently being shared online, is causing devices to freeze not long after it's played.
Image Credit: The Verge
The video is corrupt, and appears to be generating a loop which causes iOS 10 to crash, according to The Verge, which tested the glitch on several iPhones running versions of iOS 10.1.x or the iOS 10.2 beta. The issue first came to light on Reddit.
Notably the crash takes about 10 seconds, during which people can do other things on their iPhone as the device gradually slows down. Once an iPhone freezes the only option is to reboot it, though it should work as normal once it recovers.
Apple has yet to announce a fix for the issue.
The company has had to deal with similar issues in the past, such as in 2015, when a text string sent through Messages was able to prevent people from reopening the app, or would crash an iPhone entirely.
Image Credit: The Verge
The video is corrupt, and appears to be generating a loop which causes iOS 10 to crash, according to The Verge, which tested the glitch on several iPhones running versions of iOS 10.1.x or the iOS 10.2 beta. The issue first came to light on Reddit.
Notably the crash takes about 10 seconds, during which people can do other things on their iPhone as the device gradually slows down. Once an iPhone freezes the only option is to reboot it, though it should work as normal once it recovers.
Apple has yet to announce a fix for the issue.
The company has had to deal with similar issues in the past, such as in 2015, when a text string sent through Messages was able to prevent people from reopening the app, or would crash an iPhone entirely.
Comments
They should get on top of that right away.
... Or a mild inconvenience at best. I can tell you about several other glitches that have plagued my
iphones over the years, including my current 6s, that are as inconvenient, if not more so than this. They aren't "perfect" and yes you're going to have to reboot them because ... glitches.
Next time details about the video video might be helpful so we can inform our less tech savy friends what to look out for. But for the record you didn't even include the detail from the verge article that mentions you have to receive it as a link rather than as an actual video file attachement.
This was an informative post, not just clickbait. No need to perpetuate the flame wars over it.
Exactly. Further, Apple will issue a fix and the issue will be dealt with. If you were on Android, 80% of users would NEVER get a fix with the rest waiting 30 days (best case for a Nexus/Pixel) to many months.
People all over are blowing this out of proportion. Probably Android users who are still susceptible to Stagefright from last year, which is far more serious but uses a similar attack vector.
Zero? That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
Waiting for your detailed report for every single Android device on the planet showing that none of them have been affected.
Android is a shit show for security, and will never match IOS.
But I'll also side with a tiny part of your otherwise silly (prove zero? Mr Spock you are not) unsupported post. Android may never be as locked down as iOS.
You claimed zero, the burden of proof is on you. Or are you going to continue with your usual circular logic?
The whole idea of malware is to get access to a device WITHOUT THE USER KNOWING. Sort of like all those millions of cheap IoT cameras used to perform a DDoS attack. You think any of those users knew what was going on? It's been this way since the first viruses appeared. You can't do any harm, collect data, send premium MMS or other nefarious things if the users gets a warning on their screen "Thank you for updating to Malware 2.0, enjoy your new software."
Then again, I think you are right. There's no threat from Stagefright, which is why those billions of Android devices haven;t been patched. There's no need to patch a non-existent threat, is there? Must be why Google dragged their feet on this too. They knew it wasn't an issue.