Monday, January 25, 2016

Clickers Beware: 'CrashSafari' Links Will Kill Your iPhone

I don't call the people doing this "pranksters". I call them f*ing jerks.

http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/clickers-beware-crashsafari-links-will-kill-your-iphone-n503941

by DEVIN COLDEWEY
Jan. 25, 2016

Pranksters on the social web are sending people to a website that causes smartphones to crash — so you might want to hold off on clicking or tapping random links today.

Don't worry, it isn't some critical bug that Apple or Google needs to patch — it's just ordinary webpage components used maliciously to overload just about any browser.

The website, crashsafari.com (and crashchrome.com — needless to say, don't visit either), adds numbers to the address bar as fast as it can — crashsafari.com/0, then /01, then /012, /0123, and eventually /0123456789101112131415... and so on. Each time it adds a number, that page is saved to your history — and it adds up fast.

This history and URL overload leads mobile browsers to crash and desktop ones to hang (You should still be able to force-quit the application if it's stalling). "What were you expecting?" reads the only text on the page.

Clicking on the nefarious link could result to a major annoyance — unsaved data could be lost — but it's unlikely to cause any lasting damage to your device.

The bug is old, but the joke is new, so exercise caution in following links until the jokers in your online acquaintance tire of sending friends' phones into death spirals. Like any other joke link (a "Rickroll," for example), this one may be disguised with an URL shortener like t.co or bitly.

No comments:

Post a Comment