New Delhi, July 5
A security researcher has discovered a fun bug that can completely disable your iPhone’s ability to connect to Wi-Fi.
Carl Schou said in a tweet that if an iPhone is within range of a network named% secretclub% power, the device will not be able to use Wi-Fi or any related functionality.
He basically discovered that some Wi-Fi networks with the percent symbol (%) in their name can turn off Wi-Fi on iPhones and other iOS devices, 9to5Mac reports.
After an iPhone or iPad joins the network with the name “% p% s% s% s% s% n”, the device is unable to connect to Wi-Fi networks or use the features of system networking like AirDrop.
The problem persists after restarting the device.
The ‘%’ symbol is commonly used in programming languages ​​to format variables in an output string.
“In C, the specifier ‘% n’ means to store the number of characters written in the format string in a variable passed to the string format function. The Wi-Fi subsystem is probably passing the Wi-Fi network name. (SSID) unchecked to an internal library that performs string formatting, which in turn causes arbitrary memory write and buffer overflow, â€the report explains.
“This will cause memory corruption and the iOS watchdog will kill the process, effectively disabling Wi-Fi for the user,†he added.
Apple had yet to report whether it was working on a solution to the problem. IANS
