A security loophole that makes it difficult for iPhones to connect to WiFi has been found again. This latest bug is even worse because it cannot be fixed simply by resetting the network settings on the iPhone.
Last month, security researcher Carl Schou found that when he tried to connect an iPhone to a WiFi network with the name "% p% s% s% s% s% n", it simply could not connect to the WiFi network at all.
He tried changing his SSID to another name, but still to no avail. Fortunately, this problem can be solved immediately by resetting the network settings.
Schou then tried another variation, this time he investigated a WiFi network named "%secretclub% power". Turns out, this bug is worse than what he found before because the iPhone that is near this WiFi network will immediately face problems.
"You can turn off WiFi on any iOS device permanently by creating a public WiFi named %secretclub% power," wrote Schou on Twitter, as quoted by Gizmodo, Tuesday (6/7/2021).
"Resetting network settings does not guarantee the ability to restore functionality."
If previously Schou was able to solve this problem just by putting the network settings on the iPhone, this time the bug requires a more complicated solution. He says he has reset the network settings several times, force restarted the iPhone, and contacted Apple's security team.
After getting help from Twitter netizens, Schou was finally able to solve the problem by editing the iPhone backup and removing the network name from the file manually. Another way that is more burdensome for iPhone users is factory reset.
It is not known exactly what causes this WiFi bug on the iPhone. Some suspect that iOS reads the percent sign in front of the WiFi name as a marker if the character after the sign is a command and not plain text.
For this reason, iPhone users are advised to avoid WiFi networks that have a percent symbol in their name, while waiting for Apple to fix this bug in the next update.
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CYBER LIFE