This 16-character Text Will Crash Google Chrome

Remember a few months ago there was a bug in Apple’s iMessages in which if you sent a particular string of characters, it would cause the person’s Messages app to crash, or in some cases even force a reboot of the phone. Turns out that Google’s Chrome browser has a similar issue as well.

The bug, discovered by Andris Atteka, a security researcher from Latvia, found that if you were to enter “http://a/%%30%30” into the address bar of Google (without the quotes, but don’t try it), it will cause the browser to crash. Why is this, you ask? Basically the string of characters towards the end will cause Chrome to get stuck when it tries to resolve the URL, ultimately causing it to crash.

However the good news is that Atteka has since informed Google of the bug and the company has already fixed it in the open-source version of Chrome. This means that while it is fixed in that version, it might take a while before it is eventually rolled out to the rest of Chrome users. So far it seems that all versions of Chrome have been affected.

This also includes Android Web view, which is basically Chrome that is used by third-party Android apps such as Twitter and Facebook. There does not appear to be any kind of security risk with this bug, but rather an inconvenience especially if you have forms filled out halfway, or if you have some stuff online that you haven’t saved yet.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Web
Tags: Chrome, Google, Social Hit