February 19th update: An iOS update has been released that fixes the issue.
For some days there has been talk of a bug that affects all Apple products, and that temporarily blocks their operation. The bug was first discovered on February 2 on Openradar, and then taken up by the Italian site Mobile World: it is caused by an Indian character which, if received via a messaging service, or even only displayed in an app in format text, locks the iPhone or Mac. It is a character of the Telugu language, the second language spoken in India after Hindi.
The font blocks iOS and MacOS operating systems, when displayed in all apps for sending messages, such as iMessage, WhatsApp and Messenger, but also on the browser Safari, Notes, App Store, Twitter, Outlook and Gmail. Once received a message with that character the app crashes and closes suddenly, and in some cases it restarts the device.
Another iOS bug is crashing iPhones and disabling access to iMessage https://t.co/9do0xyz7k4 pic.twitter.com/15Ripq7PP8
– Tom Warren (@tomwarren) February 15, 2018
Apple has confirmed the existence of the bug, and has promised that it will be fixed, at least for iPhones, with the next operating system update, iOS 11.3. In the meantime, if the message was received via WhatsApp, the bug should stop when a new message is received, or by deleting the message with the Indian character via WhatsApp Web. you will have to reset, restoring the factory settings.
