04/30 Update below. This post was originally published on April 28
Apple continues to earn well-deserved applause after releasing the best value smartphone of 2020 (despite some little doubts). But for millions of existing iPhone owners, things went wrong. And now it’s worse.
After confirmation by Apple that almost all iPhones are vulnerable to potentially serious flaw in the iOS Mail app, the company has now started working to fix an even more immediate problem, which allows anyone to seriously crash your iPhone.
04/30 update: important news for anyone with an iPhone, iPad, MacBook, Apple Watch and even Apple TV users after Google Project Zero the team discovered “many new vulnerabilities” in iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS. Nicknamed “Fuzzing ImageIO”, the Project Zero team explains that the security vulnerabilities focus on multimedia files sent on messaging platforms (more information here). As is the policy for Project Zero, he does not reveal these flaws until after contacting Apple and the company has fixed them in its latest platform updates. The problem with that, however, is that we now know that updating to the latest versions of iOS, macOS and watchOS introduces the serious crash bug (detailed in this article below), which leaves users in a Catch-22 situation. To resolve this problem, Apple is speeding up the release of iOS 13.5 (the new name of iOS 13.4.5, which it has been testing for several weeks) as well as patches for other platforms and it should arrive in the week next. Stay tuned.
First reported last week, we now know that every iPhone running Apple’s latest iOS 13.4.1 software can crash, often by completely locking the device and even forcing a restore via DFU mode, if he receives a message containing characters in the Sindhi language. Anyone can trigger the crash on another person’s iPhone simply by sending a specific combination of these characters (excluded from this message for obvious reasons) to Message or Mail. IPads, Macs and even Apple Watch can also be affected.
The good news is that Apple is moving quickly to repair the damage. The official @AppleSupport worked at full speed to help users (tip: disable Mail and Message notifications, the crash comes from the notification and not from the message itself) and Apple has also been working hard because I can confirm that the latest beta version of iOS 13.4.5 fixes it.
In my IOS 13.4.1 Upgrade Guide, I warned users not to update due to a number of bugs (introduced and ignored). That said, if you can’t (naturally) resist the allure of new software, you may not have to wait long. I understand that Apple will release iOS 13.4.5 or an iOS 13.4.2 emergency update this week, and it will contain a fix for the high iOS email vulnerability as well as.
Watch this space for developments.
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