iPhone warning: This network name can disable Wi-Fi on your phone

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iPhone warning: This network name tin can disable Wi-Fi on your phone

(Image credit: Malte Helmhold via Unsplash)

A couple of weeks ago, security researcher Carl Schou plant a quirky iPhone issues where the device'south Wi-Fi could be disabled past connecting to a network with the SSID of "%p%s%s%southward%south%n". Information technology'southward safe to say that the chances of doing this by fault were pretty low, and it was more interesting as a rare modern sighting of the age-erstwhile format-string issues.

Merely now Schou has discovered a related nothing day problems that may both exist easier to fall victim to, and harder to fix if you do.

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"You can permanently disable whatever iOS device's WiFI by hosting a public WiFi named %secretclub%ability," Schou tweeted. "Resetting network settings is non guaranteed to restore functionality."

Seriously, I still don't have WiFi motion picture.twitter.com/AaF9IQBvCpJuly 4, 2021

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It's non articulate if the bug requires you lot to connect to said mischievous network, or simply for the iPhone to browse it. If it's the latter, that ways that anybody could set up a hotspot with the iPhone-breaking name in a decorated place, and enjoy the carnage.

Schou was initially nonplussed as to how to set up his device, tweeting that resetting the network and strength-restarting the iPhone did nothing. Eight hours later, his iPhone was working once more, simply using a method that'due south likely beyond the abilities of the majority of owners.

"To restore WiFi functionality, you have to manually edit an iPhone backup and remove malicious entries from the known networks .plist," he tweeted.

Schou reached out to Apple'due south device security team to alert them of the issues, and yous would imagine a prepare will be issued pretty urgently — hopefully before the loophole is exploited maliciously.

There is some good news, still. Information technology's possible that this is not quite as bad as it seems, and could actually be the culmination of two bugs combining. Schou retweeted a thread by @wr3nchsr, which suggested that the hard reset/backup edit selection may only be required if the telephone comes into contact with two malicious SSIDs.

I didn't trace that back in the binaries but for some reason having more than than one malicious SSID might exist causing the reset to neglect? Equally a upshot whenever wifid attempts to start, it crashes due to a null pointer dereference. (5/n)July iv, 2021

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If that's the case, then trolls would accept a far harder time using this exploit maliciously, every bit it's the kind of matter that you lot're just likely to encounter if you're a security researcher actively looking for trouble. However, we would expect Apple to set up this pretty chop-chop, as the previous issues doesn't seem to impact Android devices at all.

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Freelance contributor Alan has been writing about tech for over a decade, covering phones, drones and everything in between. Previously Deputy Editor of tech site Alphr, his words are found all over the web and in the occasional magazine as well. When not weighing upwardly the pros and cons of the latest smartwatch, you'll probably find him tackling his ever-growing games excess. Or, more likely, playing Spelunky for the millionth time.

Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/iphone-warning-this-network-name-can-disable-wi-fi-on-your-phone

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