The Text That Will Crash Almost Any Mac, iPhone Or iPad

[warrior1]

I'm only going to link the article. Which is safe btw.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/the-text-that-will-crash-almost-any-mac-iphone-or-ipad

[NYC_SKP]

1. I'm looking at the article and text on an iMac. No problems.

Yet....

[warrior1]

2. be carefull

[surrealAmerican]

9. No problem for my old MacBook either.

It sounds false. I checked Snopes, but couldn't find anything on this.

[Control-Z]

10. That string of text

is a bitmap/screenshot, not actual text, so it wouldn't be a problem.

[NYC_SKP]

3. PS: Also at that page, link to "SMS Racing" texting while driving simulator.

If I had kids of driving age, I'd make them play this daily for a week before being allowed to drive.

http://holdenlink.com/project/sms-racing/

[Islandurp]

4. It didn't do anything:(

[NYC_SKP]

5. The article has a jpeg of the characters, not the actual characters.

I am not feeling lucky, so will leave it to others to experiment.

[Prism]

11. This crashes my iphone 4s browser

I'm posting this on my PC. Not sure if your pasting is the culprit, but this thread - and only this thread - will now kill my iphone's browser when I open it.

Just FYI.

[Billy Love]

14. Okay. I did delete it.

No problem.

Crashes on some phones but not all.

[Prism]

16. That fixed it

So apparently it does crash some things.

[Lars39]

15. Did mine, too

[warrior1]

12. maybe you should delete this

[freshwest]

18. NYC_SKIP, do you mind telling me what OSX update and Firefox browser you're using?

I'm so far behind on these that I am upwilling to catch up, don't like what a lot of the updates do, and am not planning to intall 'Maverick' either.

Weird, too, that this is supposed to be a hacking scheme out of Syria. Just concerned if I keep on googling 'syria' I'll get into trouble here.

TIA.

[NYC_SKP]

19. Hi freshwest! I'm running 10.8.4 Mountain Lion and Firefox 23.0.1, but that doesn't mean I'm safe..

I haven't opened the actual characters described in the article.

And, wisely, the article only shows a jpeg of the string of characters, not the characters themselves.

As curious as I am to find out if it's true, I'm not going to risk this iMac or my iPad or phone to prove them right or wrong!

I think you'll be OK as long as you don't look for the malevolent characters.

[freshwest]

23. Thanks! But what do you mean by 'malevolent characters'?

Non-English or mixed language websites?

Otherwise there are plenty of malevolent characters in the world, haha.

[NYC_SKP]

26. The specific Arabic characters that are shown in the graphic in the article.

This string of Arabic characters, which has no meaning, exploits a problem with Apple’s Core Text rendering engine, which is the part of its operating system software that draws, smooths and lays out text. To fix the bug users will have to update their operating systems, either in a small increment or to iOS 7 or the next version of OS X, Mavericks, neither of which have been released to the public but both of which are protected from the problem.

[freshwest]

28. Only those in that combination. Well, I think I can avoid that...

How clever and not nice of someone to think of it...

[Dreamer Tatum]

6. Either this is not true, or Android has a much worse problem, or both.

A fanboy/shill will be along shortly to explain.

[backscatter712]

21. Android devices don't have this bug.

Essentially, a string of nonsensical Unicode text consisting of a mashup of arabic characters has been discovered that crashes Macs, iPhones & iPads. Androids & PCs are unaffected.

[Billy Love]

7. I just tested this with my BIL's Ipad - it didn't crash... I think the rumor is fake.

[Orrex]

25. Did you click on the article, which contains an image, or did you view the actual text?

[Wounded Bear]

13. Hmmmm.....

Why does it read like an ad to upgrade your OS, or buy Firefox?

[freshwest]

17. Firefox is still free, AFAIK. But regarding warnings, yes, generally they want to sell something.

[1-Old-Man]

20. My Mac locks up every time the one of the dogs farts

Anyone who tells you that Macs do not suffer the same slow-downs and lock ups that PCs do is out of their mind.

[MissB]

22. If I click your thread with my MacBook Air, it crashes the browser.

But it works fine for my iPad mini.

[Orrex]

24. Wait--I thought that Apple products are perfect and proof against all harm?

How can this be?

[dkf]

27. Crashed my iPhone...

Thought it was okay...then it froze.

[darkangel218]

29. I stuff sucks.

Android is a thousand times better.

[David Krout]

30. The Apple bug being reported is nothing compared to this one