Earlier this week Apple’s messaging service was found to be vulnerable when a user’s iPhone received a specific string of unicode characters. Apple acknowledged the iMessage problem which was causing mobiles to completely shut down when opening the malicious mail and has now worked out a temporary fix which we will share with you now.
If Messages quits unexpectedly after you get a text with a specific string of characters:
- Ask Siri to “read unread messages.”
- Use Siri to reply to the malicious message. After you reply, you’ll be able to open Messages again.
- In Messages, swipe left to delete the entire thread. Or tap and hold the malicious message, tap More, and delete the message from the thread.
Of course this is not a feasible long term solution and Apple is working on an update which will nail the bug once and for all. We’ll keep you informed on when that’s available.
Source: Apple Support
Also See: This single text message is crashing people’s iPhones