Text message 'shutting down iPhones'

A specific text message, containing certain characters, has reportedly caused some iPhones to crash.

(Getty) Source: Getty Images Europe

The text message, which was posted about on Reddit, is made up of a series of characters that, when sent to a person’s iPhone, apparenlty cause it to crash and then restart.

The message is said to be made up of a series of symbols and Arabic characters.

Techcrunch cited an Apple statement which said the company was "aware of an iMessage issue caused by a specific series of unicode characters and we will make a fix available in a software update."

Users on a Reddit thread about the message have speculated about the reason for the crash.

"I can tell you it is due to how the banner notifications process the Unicode text,” one user wrote. "The banner briefly attempts to present the incoming text and then "gives up" thus the crash.

"On a jailbroken device, this ultimately leads to safe mode. However, on a stock iOS device, there is no safe mode hence the respring after the crash."

The Reddit users also said the bug affected iWatches and the messaging application "WhatsApp" as well.

 

News of the bug quickly spread on social media: