Typing these four characters may cause your iPhone to crash

A recently discovered bug causes iPhones and iPads to freeze momentarily. All it takes to trigger the error is just four characters.

On Wednesday, a security researcher discovered that typing “”:: could cause the user interface of an Apple mobile app called Springboard to hang.

TechCrunch has confirmed that these characters do indeed cause Springboard to crash when entered into the search bar in the Settings app, as well as when swiping right from the home screen and entering them into the App Library search bar.

As others have noted, all that is needed is “”: and any other character. Calling the bug briefly freezes Springboard, then reloads the lock screen. In other tests, the bug caused the screen to go black for a second.

When contacted, Apple did not provide comment.

Researchers told TechCrunch that the bug likely does not pose a security risk.

“This is not a security bug,” said Ryan Stortz, an iOS security researcher who analyzed the bug. Patrick Wardle, who also researches iOS and founded security startup DoubleYou, agreed.

There is no evidence yet to suggest that this bug could be triggered by anyone other than the iOS device owner manually typing in characters, unlike a bug from 2020 that caused the Twitter app to crash for any user who viewed a tweet containing a specific set of characters.