A new bug on iOS affecting a majority of Apple devices has been discovered. It can reportedly crash apps to cause recurring force closes. It also has the potential to freeze, reboot the device and cause a bootloop error, as soon as a Telugu character is pasted in the any TextField, Label or TextView. As per a
report by MobileWorld, the bug is not isolated to iOS and it also effects watchOS, macOS. However, it severely affects iPhones as the Telugu character is received by an iPhone or even entered into a text field, it can cause Messages and even third-party apps like Twitter, WhatsApp, and others to crash. Apple is already aware of the issue has told
Engadget that they are working on a fix for it, which will be released ahead of iOS 11.3. The company also confirmed that it's working on a similar patch for watchOS and macOS as well.
As per the report, if the Telugu symbol is displayed in a notification by an iPhone, it can also crash Springboard, which handles the home screen and many other major functions in an
iPhone. Also, if the device is restarted while Springboard reboots, it can cause a bootloop error which can only be solved by reinstalling the OS in Device Firmware Update (DFU) mode. The latest public beta version of
iOS 11.3 is reportedly unaffected by the bug and as per its bug report filing, Apple already knows about the issue. We have not shown the Telugu character here as it could be used for malicious purposes.
This is not the first uncanny bug to affect iOS. The operating system was recently plagued by a ‘chaiOS’ bug, which would crash the Messaging app and could even reboot iPhones. Apple soon released a patch to resolve the issue. Also, the entire source code of iOS 9 was recently leaked online and was promptly taken down after Apple sent a DMCA notice to GitHub, who hosted the code. You can read more about it
here.