iOS Safari crash hack

munge · 27 Jan 2016 at 10:00

So I woke up this morning to find I couldn't search for anything from the address bar of Safari on the iPad or iPhone. Sticking it into Google I find there is a web address "hack" which is causing Safari to crash because of a loop.

Now I know for definite that I haven't opened any dodgy link and it all worked fine last night and I've opened nothing since, so where has this sudden vulnerability come from?

I assume it is this as it pretty much fits in with the Reddit thread. My phone was noticeably hot before Safari now won't work. For info, turning off suggestions stops it rebooting.

aceface57 · 27 Jan 2016 at 12:10

I've not visited any of the mentioned sites, but have read about them on my desktop.
I'm now having the problem with safari crashing on my iPhone whenever I attempt to search for anything, favourite links still work though, not sure if it's a connection on not.

aceface57 · 27 Jan 2016 at 12:16

Never mind, searched Twitter and it's trending now. Turn off safari search suggestions and it's now working again for me.

munge · 27 Jan 2016 at 12:19

Neither had I, only Wikipedia, Spotify help forum, Parallels.com, MacWorld, Nespresso and a NorthEast newspaper website, so have no idea where this came from, it's like somebody has hacked into my iOS across all my devices.

Fortunately, turning off the suggestion feature in the address bar sorts it out, but that's only symptom management rather than cure. I'd imagine it'd be a fairly simple fix though the people who write malicious script are pretty inventive, so who knows where this will go.

And perhaps we should be grateful that this isn't a particularly malicious exploit, just very annoying.