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New Exploit Breaks the iPhone's Messaging App with One Text

tomshardware.com

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Re: New Exploit Breaks the iPhone's Messaging App with One Text

#31

Post by teddyh »

userbinator wrote: post #11

The flip side of making things opaque and "just work" per Apple philosophy, is that when they don't work, trying to fix it becomes even more difficult. This is a very unusual "exploit", however --- according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard it's not even a valid .vcf file but looks to be just an RTF with copious amounts of text (appears to be bytes from PNG images concatenated together, although I haven't actua…

> The flip side of making things opaque and "just work" per Apple philosophy, is that when they don't work, trying to fix it becomes even more difficult.

“The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.”

— Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

Re: New Exploit Breaks the iPhone's Messaging App with One Text

#32

Post by dang »

NEDM64 wrote: post #19

Well, I didn't watch the video, but I'm guess what the video didn't show was that after 3 app crashes, the app state will be discarded and restarted as usual in a PC. Learn about it before criticizing after watching a infotainment video on YouTube. Then, fixing this is just a question of not opening the vCard, and update your phone software when the fix is available.

We've banned this account for repeatedly posting uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments.

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13291565 and marked it off-topic.

Re: New Exploit Breaks the iPhone's Messaging App with One Text

#33

Post by NEDM64 »

dang wrote: post #32
NEDM64 wrote: post #19

Well, I didn't watch the video, but I'm guess what the video didn't show was that after 3 app crashes, the app state will be discarded and restarted as usual in a PC. Learn about it before criticizing after watching a infotainment video on YouTube. Then, fixing this is just a question of not opening the vCard, and update your phone software when the fix is available.

We've banned this account for repeatedly posting uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13291565 and marked it off-topic.

The fuck?

Is this another android/anti-Apple circle jerk?

Re: New Exploit Breaks the iPhone's Messaging App with One Text

#34

Post by h4waii »

pmorici wrote: post #5
aiur3la wrote: post #2

Serious question: this is the third time a exploit of this kind is publicly revealed for this app. How comes we don't see a global hack outbreak? I mean, script kiddies would love to break millions of phones. What has stopped them from doing that so far?

Sending texts isn't free. Not many people are going to be willing to pay 5 cents a pop just to piss people off on a large scale.

You can quite easily purchase unlimited outbound SMS from just about any local carrier in any part of the world for less than $20, either one time or monthly.

It would be very easy to mass message this to an entire country in a matter of weeks.

Re: New Exploit Breaks the iPhone's Messaging App with One Text

#35

Post by abduhl »

op00to wrote: post #25
berberous wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Apple's tech support insisted that the reason my iPhone 6 (not a 6s) shut off at 30-40% was due to a software issue, not a battery issue. They suggested I not only wipe my phone, but set it up as a brand new device. It's insane that this is the only way to fix something they claim to know is a software issue.

This is their default response to everything. Once you go through that step (and they maybe grab diagnostics to determine you actually started as new), they will actually push to resolve your issue. It's easy to recover from this w/ iTunes or iCloud device backups, so a moderately painless hoop to jump through.

Rofl this is the first time I've ever read something that refers to "wipe your device" as a "moderately painless hoop to jump throigh".

This is customer service these days?

Re: New Exploit Breaks the iPhone's Messaging App with One Text

#36

Post by jsmeaton »

berberous wrote: post #15
burntwater wrote: post #14

Can't say factually it would work here, but this makes me pine for the days of Blackberry Desktop Manager and its very granular backup/wipe/restore abilities. I no longer do IT support for mobile devices, so I'm not sure what the current abilities are, but when I stopped in ~2012 the only options for both iPhones and Android were basically full wipes and restores. All or nothing. With the Blackberry you could backup/…

Yup. Apple's tech support insisted that the reason my iPhone 6 (not a 6s) shut off at 30-40% was due to a software issue, not a battery issue. They suggested I not only wipe my phone, but set it up as a brand new device. It's insane that this is the only way to fix something they claim to know is a software issue.

They've admitted to a hardware fault and have a replacement program. Got my battery replaced and haven't had the problem again.

Re: New Exploit Breaks the iPhone's Messaging App with One Text

#37

Post by mSparks »

dang wrote: post #32
NEDM64 wrote: post #19

Well, I didn't watch the video, but I'm guess what the video didn't show was that after 3 app crashes, the app state will be discarded and restarted as usual in a PC. Learn about it before criticizing after watching a infotainment video on YouTube. Then, fixing this is just a question of not opening the vCard, and update your phone software when the fix is available.

We've banned this account for repeatedly posting uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13291565 and marked it off-topic.

please take your life somewhere else.

Re: New Exploit Breaks the iPhone's Messaging App with One Text

#39

Post by tinus_hn »

jsmeaton wrote: post #36
berberous wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Apple's tech support insisted that the reason my iPhone 6 (not a 6s) shut off at 30-40% was due to a software issue, not a battery issue. They suggested I not only wipe my phone, but set it up as a brand new device. It's insane that this is the only way to fix something they claim to know is a software issue.

They've admitted to a hardware fault and have a replacement program. Got my battery replaced and haven't had the problem again.

That's for the 6s, not the 6.

Re: New Exploit Breaks the iPhone's Messaging App with One Text

#40

Post by op00to »

abduhl wrote: post #35
op00to wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is their default response to everything. Once you go through that step (and they maybe grab diagnostics to determine you actually started as new), they will actually push to resolve your issue. It's easy to recover from this w/ iTunes or iCloud device backups, so a moderately painless hoop to jump through.

Rofl this is the first time I've ever read something that refers to "wipe your device" as a "moderately painless hoop to jump throigh". This is customer service these days?

I can backup, wipe my device, do the test, pull the debug logs, and restore from backup in an hour or so. iTunes and iCloud make it really easy to do this. It's just not cost effective for Apple to treat every case as a special snowflake if nuking from orbit fixes the issue. It sucks, but it's not like you'll get support from anywhere else.
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