Security researcher Carl Schou has recently discovered another bug in iOS, where if an iPhone attempts to connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot with a special name, it is likely to cause abnormal wireless connectivity issues on the device.
Initially, he created a wireless hotspot named “%p%s%s%s%s%n”. However, during the first attempt to connect, Carl Schou found that it was impossible to connect at all. After further attempts, the Wi-Fi connectivity function on the device was completely disabled.
According to Bleeping Computer, even subsequent attempts to connect to other Wi-Fi hotspots could not cure this “infection.” Worse still, after changing the hotspot SSID name and restarting the iPhone, the problem still persisted.
A group of people tested the same faulty SSID name, and they all confirmed the issue. In contrast, Android mobile devices were able to connect to the “anomalous name” wireless access point without any problems.
Some researchers believe that the issue may be related to a bug in iOS regarding the “input parsing” of Wi-Fi hotspot names. The percentage symbol at the beginning of the SSID may be misinterpreted by the operating system as a string format specifier. As a result, the characters following the % are treated as a so-called variable rather than plain text format.
For users who have unfortunately fallen victim to this issue, the only way to restore the Wi-Fi connectivity function on iOS devices is to reset the network settings, as follows:
● Open ‘Settings’;
● Go to ‘General’;
● Select ‘Reset Network Settings’;
● Confirm the request;
● After the iPhone restarts, try to set up Wi-Fi as usual.
Of course, this is not the first time we have seen Apple devices malfunction due to encountering special strings. For example, a few years ago, iPhones/iPads were caused to crash by incoming notifications based on special emojis or specific German characters (also known as “text bombs”).
Additionally, even earlier, some attentive users may have noticed that certain mobile devices could not correctly retrieve or recognize Wi-Fi hotspot SSID names in pure Chinese format.