Apple releases workaround for message crashes

Apple has published a workaround for iOS users affected by crashes caused by certain messages. The company is currently working on a fix. The Messages app on iOS was found to crash after receiving messages with special characters.

Apple claims to be aware of the bug and to resolve the issue with a software update. In the meantime, affected users can open the Messages app and ask Siri to read the unread messages aloud. After asking Siri to read the malicious message, the Messages app will open again. Then users can delete the offending messages.

On Wednesday, it appeared that iOS users were experiencing crashes in the Messages app after receiving messages with certain Chinese and Arabic characters, via SMS and Twitter, among others. The series of Unicode rendering errors that produced the messages caused Apple’s CoreText system to crash. Immediately after the bug appeared, unofficial workarounds appeared.