The researcher Carl Schou discovered a new flaw in iPhone devices that can permanently break the functionality that allows the device to connect to a wi-fi network. This bug is particularly insidious as it can be exploited simply by an attacker by convincing the victim to connect to a “rogue” wi-fi hotspot set up by it.
Once an iPhone has established a connection to a hotspot with particular characteristics, the phone will no longer be able to establish a connection to a wi-fi device, and the problem persists even if you simply try to restart the smartphone or rename the wi-fi hotspot.
Researcher Carl Schou accidentally discovered the problem after assigning the name “%p%s%s%s%s%n “to your wi-fi hotspot and attempting to connect using your iPhone with the iOS 14.4.2 operating system version.
Immediately after the discovery, the expert found that other versions of the popular Apple operating system are also affected by the problem, for example iPhone Xs devices running iOS version 14.4.2: “This week, the reverse engineer Carl Schou ha found a problem connecting to his personal wi-fi hotspot named:% p% s% s% s% s% n “quotes the post published by BleepingComputer, the first site to divulge the singular discovery. When it connected to the hotspot, his iPhone’s wi-fi was disabled and every time he tried to reactivate it, it quickly shut down, even if he restarted the device or changed the hotspot name. “
It is easy to understand that this flaw could have a serious impact on an actual attack, let’s think of an attacker who sets up a wi-fi hotspot with the aforementioned name and which is accessible without providing any password. How many times in a lobby of a hotel, a station, or at a conference, in a light way, have you connected to the first open network you were in front of?
We will discuss these bad habits shortly, for now let’s consider the potential of an attack so simple to carry out. The bug is it dangerous even for android users? Good news, for them, because it seems the flaw doesn’t work against Android devices.
But what is the main cause of this problem? Security researchers independent hypothesize that the defect is caused by a problem of analysis of the strings provided during the setting of the wi-fi parameters, technically we are talking about string parsing.
The sequence of special characters that make up the name of the wi-fi hotspot used by Schou is not interpreted as a simple name of a network to connect to, but as string identifiers which provide the operating system with specific instructions for interpreting the text that follows them. So the Apple iOS operating system interprets the letters following the “%” character incorrectly giving rise to the problem.
But the question you are asking is: how to restore wi-fi connectivity on iPhone devices that have connected to rogue hotspots? The only way is to reset the affected iPhone to factory network settings; Here are the simple steps to remedy the problem:
- Access the Settings on the iPhone and select the menu item General
- Select Reset
- Select the “Reset network settings” option, the device will now reboot and the network settings will be reset to factory defaults
That way they will come Also reset passwords and wi-fi networks, as well as restore the cellular network settings and the Vpn and Apn settings used previously.
.