Found a nice bug in IOS today, bricks your phone and kills the Simulator

#1

Post by jimsteinhart » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 9:40 AM UTC

Found a nice bug in IOS today, bricks your phone and kills the Simulator
pastie.org

Re: Found a nice bug in IOS today, bricks your phone and kills the Simulator

#2

Post by schrototo » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 10:33 AM UTC

Does it really "brick" your phone, as in "makes it crash in a way that is completely irrecoverable and that can never ever be repaired, therefore turning your phone forever into a piece of hardware comparable in functionality to a brick" or does it just make the phone crash?

Re: Found a nice bug in IOS today, bricks your phone and kills the Simulator

#3

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 10:39 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Found a nice bug in IOS today, bricks your phone and kills the Simulator

#4

Post by Fjanth » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 10:51 AM UTC

Im the original poster, that found the bug. Nah it doesnt brick it, it does however require (atleast on 4.1. for me) a factory reset.

The problem seems to be that springboard locks up in an endless loop, restarting the device wont help it because its still loading the offending notification from the cache.

Re: Found a nice bug in IOS today, bricks your phone and kills the Simulator

#5

Post by gedekran » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 10:52 AM UTC

schrototo wrote: post #2

Does it really "brick" your phone, as in "makes it crash in a way that is completely irrecoverable and that can never ever be repaired, therefore turning your phone forever into a piece of hardware comparable in functionality to a brick" or does it just make the phone crash?

People use bricked incorrectly way too often. Leading to others wondering if they actually mean it is as functional as a brick or that it just crashed and thus can be rebooted or restored.

Then again I haven't personally bricked a device in a long time.

Re: Found a nice bug in IOS today, bricks your phone and kills the Simulator

#6

Post by Fjanth » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 10:54 AM UTC

Also here is a nicer version that still triggers the bug http://www.pastie.org/private/8a48wgmcuuhjjwbupbk3g

Re: Found a nice bug in IOS today, bricks your phone and kills the Simulator

#7

Post by gedekran » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 10:56 AM UTC

Fjanth wrote: post #4

Im the original poster, that found the bug. Nah it doesnt brick it, it does however require (atleast on 4.1. for me) a factory reset. The problem seems to be that springboard locks up in an endless loop, restarting the device wont help it because its still loading the offending notification from the cache.

More apt would have been that it disables your iphone temporarily until a factory reset or restore is performed. Saying it bricks it causes me to think back to messing up the flashing of firmware on a device and the device never working again.

Re: Found a nice bug in IOS today, bricks your phone and kills the Simulator

#8

Post by TillE » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 11:10 AM UTC

schrototo wrote: post #2

Does it really "brick" your phone, as in "makes it crash in a way that is completely irrecoverable and that can never ever be repaired, therefore turning your phone forever into a piece of hardware comparable in functionality to a brick" or does it just make the phone crash?

I'll accept "brick" when recovery requires flashing via JTAG. But not when you just have to press a few buttons.

Re: Found a nice bug in IOS today, bricks your phone and kills the Simulator

#9

Post by Fjanth » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 11:14 AM UTC

gedekran wrote: post #7

Fjanth wrote: post #4

Im the original poster, that found the bug. Nah it doesnt brick it, it does however require (atleast on 4.1. for me) a factory reset. The problem seems to be that springboard locks up in an endless loop, restarting the device wont help it because its still loading the offending notification from the cache.

More apt would have been that it disables your iphone temporarily until a factory reset or restore is performed. Saying it bricks it causes me to think back to messing up the flashing of firmware on a device and the device never working again.

Yeah, I know. Its to bad though because all the discussions are turning into discussions about the proper use of "bricking".

Re: Found a nice bug in IOS today, bricks your phone and kills the Simulator

#10

Post by JonnieCache » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 11:29 AM UTC

TillE wrote: post #8

schrototo wrote: post #2

Does it really "brick" your phone, as in "makes it crash in a way that is completely irrecoverable and that can never ever be repaired, therefore turning your phone forever into a piece of hardware comparable in functionality to a brick" or does it just make the phone crash?

I'll accept "brick" when recovery requires flashing via JTAG. But not when you just have to press a few buttons.

This is the definition used by people that actually hack hardware, people who are used to performing brain surgery on set-top-boxes and such like. It's not bricked unless unbricking requires a soldering iron or similar, and some JTAG action.

These days its getting harder and harder to brick devices, as bootloaders are becoming more and more advanced and more separate from the cores of the devices themselves. Once upon a time a faulty network cable could render your router forever inoperable due to a dropped byte in a firmware flash.

Today, my galaxy S phone has had some truly awful things done to it, including corruption of the supposedly sacred NVRAM data, and the USB bootloader has always faithfully come up after the button combo, ready to accept a new flash. It must run on totally separate hardware from the phone proper.