The website link of a prank site is currently making the rounds and sets a global trend because it causes the iPhone or iPad to crash if the user clicks it. The link in question — which will not be posted on this blog to prevent accidental clicking — also causes the Safari web browser to crash on Macs.
For some Apple devices, clicking on the link can even cause the device to reboot entirely. Unfortunately, convincing people to click on that link has become something of an internet "prank" recently.
The website's name is both fitting and telling — Crashsafari.com — but that can easily be disguised using a link-shortener like Bit.ly. The ability to mask the URL's actual name has led to plenty of accidental clicks, with people sharing the shortened link on social networking sites as a joke. While the site is specifically meant to crash Safari, those running other browsers should also beware, as it seems like this prank isn't always Safari-specific.
This isn't the first time a bug like this has happened on iOS. In May of 2015, sending a specific set of Arabic characters would cause the recipient's phone to crash.
So how do these buggy links work? The difference here is the May bug exploited the iPhone operating system's ability to render text. In the case of Crashsafari.com, going to the link above takes the user to a website which runs a tiny bit of code to overload one of the APIs (Application Program Interface), causing the phone to crash.
For some Apple devices, clicking on the link can even cause the device to reboot entirely. Unfortunately, convincing people to click on that link has become something of an internet "prank" recently.
The website's name is both fitting and telling — Crashsafari.com — but that can easily be disguised using a link-shortener like Bit.ly. The ability to mask the URL's actual name has led to plenty of accidental clicks, with people sharing the shortened link on social networking sites as a joke. While the site is specifically meant to crash Safari, those running other browsers should also beware, as it seems like this prank isn't always Safari-specific.
This isn't the first time a bug like this has happened on iOS. In May of 2015, sending a specific set of Arabic characters would cause the recipient's phone to crash.
So how do these buggy links work? The difference here is the May bug exploited the iPhone operating system's ability to render text. In the case of Crashsafari.com, going to the link above takes the user to a website which runs a tiny bit of code to overload one of the APIs (Application Program Interface), causing the phone to crash.
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