A vulnerability in iOS has been uncovered that can prevent an iPhone from connecting to Wi-Fi hotspots if it tries to connect to one with a specific name that breaks the function.
Carl Schou, a security researcher, gave a personal Wi-Fi hotspot a name made up of unusual characters — “%p%s%s%s%s%n”.
Schou observed the iPhone couldn’t connect to the hotspot at all when he tried to connect to it, and subsequently learned that it had totally deactivated Wi-Fi connectivity on the device, according to AppleInsider.
According to BleepingComputer, attempts to connect to other hotspots failed, and the issue persisted even after changing the hotspot’s SSID and rebooting the iPhone.
After the tests, it was observed that the issue appears to be limited to iPhones, as Android devices appear to connect to the oddly-named access point without any problems.
Users with impacted iPhones must reset their iOS network settings to resolve the issue.
According to the report, the discovery is similar to text messages that contained strings and special characters that could cause problems for iPhones and loads.
The report noted that April’s “text bomb” caused iPhones to crash if an incoming notification was viewed with a flag emoji and a certain Sindhi language character.