Some days back, a Whatsapp message went viral which had a black dot, some text and an emoji in it. The message crashed the app on various Android devices. It was not an ordinary message but had a hidden Telugu script in it which comprised of Unicode characters that made the CPU of the devices go out of control. This resulted in hanging and crashing of the app and in some cases, devices as well. The same bug has now targetted the iOS messages app and has caused similar issues on the iPhones as well.
The malicious message in iOS Messages went a step further and froze the app completely which doesn’t get back to normal unless the device is restarted. The Black Dot bug has caused issues in iPhone X along with iPhone 8 and 7 series. According to the reports, older phones were most affected by the bug. At the moment, iOS 11.3 and the beta versions of 11.4 are also among the victims. Not only the iPhones but the script has also been infected the macOS. Opening the message causes the system’s memory consumption to shoot. The bug also caused trouble on the iPhones but luckily, there is a simple fix to it.
You will need to open the Messages app without opening the message and remove it. This can be done by using 3D touch on Messages app icon on the home screen and then tapping on the ‘new message’. When the window for new message opens, cancel it and you will land in your inbox from where you can delete the bug message. Let’s hope Apple will soon find a fix to this issue and adds more security to the iOS future.
