Anyone can make an iOS 10-powered device to freeze by sending them three characters, thanks to a new bug that has just been discovered.
To exploit the bug, the user has to send a text that consists of three characters in the following order-a white flag emoji, a zero, and a rainbow emoji, as per BGR. The issue affects iPhones and iPads running iOS 10.x and above, but if your device is running earlier versions, it will not be affected by the bug.
Sending the emoji text from an iOS device can get tricky, as it can also crash the sender's iPhone. As a workaround, the sender can add the emoji string in a contact's card and use iCloud Drive then send it to the recipient using iMessage. Once the text is received, the iOS device will just stop running, and the user will just have to wait for the device to reboot itself.
The emoji bug was discovered by French iOS developer Vincent Desmurs, according to The Next Web. The developer speculates that the bug is caused by how iOS handles the variation sector in his blog. As Desmurs explains in his blog, "The rainbow flag emoji isn't an emoji in itself, it's made of three characters: waving white flag, a character called variation sector 16 (VS16 for short), and the rainbow."
What happens next is that the iOS 10 device tries to combine the white flag and the zero into an emoji together because of the presence of the rainbow emoji. Since it cannot process that, the device crashes instead. Some users have reported that their Messages app keep crashing after receiving the text and already doing a reboot. Android is also affected to an extent by the same issue, but instead of freezing, it slows down instead.
Apple hasn't released a fix yet for the emoji text issue, but it is expected that the company will address it sooner rather than later.
Find out more about the emoji text bug in iOS 10 here: