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Apple's China-Friendly Censorship Caused An iPhone-Crashing Bug (wired.com)
Security researcher Patrick Wardle helped Apple fix a bug that would crash apps displaying the word "Taiwan" or the Taiwanese flag emoji. Some iPhones could be remotely crashed by something as simple as receiving a text message with the Taiwanese flag. Apple confirmed the fix in a security update Monday. Wired reports: "Basically Apple added some code to iOS with the goal that phones in China wouldn't display a Taiwanese flag," Wardle says, "and there was a bug in that code." Since at least early 2017, iOS has included that Chinese censorship function: Switch your iPhone's location setting to China, and the Taiwanese flag emoji essentially disappears from your phone, evaporating from its library of emojis and appearing as a "missing" emoji in any text that appears on the screen. That code likely represents a favor from Apple to the Chinese government, which for the last 70 years has maintained that Taiwan is a part of China and has no legitimate independent government.
But Wardle found that in some edge cases, a bug in the Taiwan-censorship code meant that instead of treating the Taiwan emoji as missing from the phone's library, it instead considered it an invalid input. That caused phones to crash altogether, resulting in what hackers call a "denial of service" attack that would let anyone crash a vulnerable device on command. Wardle's still not sure how many devices are affected, or what caused that bug to be triggered only in some iOS devices and not others, but he believes it has something to do with the phone's location and language settings. Wardle has more details of the bug on his blog.
But Wardle found that in some edge cases, a bug in the Taiwan-censorship code meant that instead of treating the Taiwan emoji as missing from the phone's library, it instead considered it an invalid input. That caused phones to crash altogether, resulting in what hackers call a "denial of service" attack that would let anyone crash a vulnerable device on command. Wardle's still not sure how many devices are affected, or what caused that bug to be triggered only in some iOS devices and not others, but he believes it has something to do with the phone's location and language settings. Wardle has more details of the bug on his blog.
Good one apple. Way to bend over for China. Anything to sell more overpriced toys.
Step 1: Make Taiwan's flag disappear in China
Step 2: Make iPhone act as if it's in China when it's in Taiwan -- pretend Taiwan has disappeared
It's a small step.
Then report back to China on everything happening on phone, everywhere -- what electronic boundaries are there for authoritarianism?
If Apple is keen on implementing that level of censorship [ which has been made public ] who knows what else stagnates in the code ready to break privacy?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Gotta love how Apple pretends to be full of virtue.
Meanwhile they collaborate with one of the world's most oppressive governments.
You don't know half of what goes on in China because it is all censored.
From Think Different to shareholders whores.