Apple chaiOS iMessage bug: Company promises software fix by next week.Apple has officially confirmed that it will issue a fix for a bug named ‘chaiOS’ in a software update next week. The bug impacts both iOS and macOS and can cause an iPhone, Mac to crash and relies on an tainted HTML file being sent via the iMessage app. News of this ‘chaiOS’ bug was first report by BuzzFeed and a developer named Abraham Masri had discovered this. He posted about the same on Github as well.
Essentially chaiOS bug is being called a ‘text bomb’, and shared as a website link on iMessage. According to reports, the bug can cause the system to crash without the user clicking on the link. Software developer Abraham Masri posted the chaiOS bug on GitHub, though the link was taken down and his account was briefly suspended on the platform. It has now been restored. Masri had also posted about the bug on Twitter saying it can “freeze the recipient’s device, and possibly restart it.”
According to Masri, he released the chaiOS bug to get Apple’s attention and this is an HTML file and not intended as a malware. The link to tries to exploit a bug with an excessively long, unending tag and when the system tries to process this, it tends to crash. Masri had said he posted about the bug to highlight the problem and there was no malicious intent behind this. He also asked those replicating the bug’s exploits not to use it for something bad.
The bug impacts iPhone X, iPhone 5s, and other devices. All iOS versions 10.0 and up are affected by this as is MacOS. ‘ChaioS’ is certainly not the first ‘text bomb’ which has caused potential problems on iOS devices. In January 2017, iMessage had a bug, where a vcf file could cause the app to crash. Restarting the app also caused it to crash. In 2016, it was reported that iMessage could crash when someone sent a specific string of text.
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