Major bug in iOS will break iPhone Wi — Fi using a rogue hotspot name

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A zero-day iOS Wi-Fi bug has been found.
The characters (%p%s%s%s%s%n) have been found to be the culprit, according to reports.
Thankfully, this bug easily fixable.

New reports show that a bug has been discovered in iOS that will disable an iPhone’s ability to connect to any Wi-Fi hotspots. This information comes from a security researcher by the name of Carl Schou, who discovered the bug whenever he created a personal hotspot name which included the following characters (%p%s%s%s%s%n). When Schou tried to connect to a hotspot, he discovered that the iPhone simply couldn’t connect to it at all and later discovered that it disabled the Wi-Fi connectivity completely for the entire device.

Trying to connect to another hotspot would fail and Wi-Fi networks wouldn’t work. This problem appears to only be with iPhones as it’s been tested on Android devices and other devices and they appear to connect perfectly fine.

After joining my personal WiFi with the SSID “%p%s%s%s%s%n”, my iPhone permanently disabled it’s WiFi functionality. Neither rebooting nor changing SSID fixes it :~) pic.twitter.com/2eue90JFu3

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— Carl Schou (@vm_call) June 18, 2021

Researchers who are looking into the issue believe it might be an issue with import phrasing, The problem is fixable though all you have to do is simply reset iOS network settings And everything should go back to normal.

How to reset network settings in iOS

Open settings > Select general then reset > Select Reset network settings > Confirm the option

Also, fair warning that we’re not recommending you try to replicate this hotspot bug — and we’re not responsible if you break your device.

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Published to Apple Scoop on 19th June, 2021.