Apple Announces Fix in Works for iPhone Messages Bug

Apple has acknowledged the existence of a bug in iOS that has caused iPhones to crash after receiving a malicious message.

According to IB Times, iPhone users have reported their phones crashing after receiving a particular message in Arabic. The phone crashes and reboots after the message appears in the banner notifications. Security experts have linked the problem to iOS's rendering of Arabic text.

Though the bug is harmless and does pose a threat to data on the phones, experts have said it could be used to mount an attack on an organization by stopping communication through iPhones. Some users have reported forwarding the message to others in their contact lists to force crash iPhones.

Apple users can protect themselves from the bug by turning off banner notifications. However, some users have reported that their Messages app remains inaccessible and the crash-reboot cycle continues until another message arrives.

An Apple spokesperson said that the company is working on fixing the bug. "We are aware of an iMessage issue caused by a specific series of unicode characters and we will make a fix available in a software update."