A couple of months ago it was reported that a malicious text was floating around that could cause an iPhone to crash. It appears that there’s now another malicious text making the rounds that can cause just about any iPhone to crash. The previous bug was exploited to even cause an iPhone to reboot continuously. As you can imagine, all of this will be incredibly frustrating to iPhone users. If you are one, you definitely need to keep an eye out for this new text message.
Apple fixed the bug that the previous text message exploited so that is no longer a cause for concern, but the latest relies on a large contacts file which can basically disable the messages app on an iPhone permanently.
This bug is apparently present is all iPhones running software version iOS 10.2.1, even the latest betas. If someone receives this contacts file via the native Messages app it will immediately freeze when the user taps on the attachment.
One might try to fix the problem by launching the multitasking switch to kill the Messages app but that doesn’t work. Users will see a white screen when they try to launch the Messages app again. The white screen will be displayed for a few seconds before it crashes to the Home screen again. The problem can’t be fixed by a hard reboot which is why it’s going to be very frustrating for the users that experience this.
Check out the video above to see a demonstration of this bug. Be vigilant when tapping on attachments in the Messages app until Apple patches this bug in a future iOS release.