This hacker attack can make your Apple iPhone unusable

A new vulnerability discovered by security researcher Trevor Spiniolas in Apple’s HomeKit platform can make your iPhone completely unusable. As explained by researcher in his blog post, Apple added a limit on the length of name for a Home accessory with iOS 15.1. Now, when a name of a HomeKit device is changed to a large string (500,000 characters in researcher’s testing), any device with iOS 15.1 or later will be disrupted, even after rebooting. The blog further reveals that the bug will be triggered again when you sign back into the iCloud account linked to the HomeKit device after restoring your iPhone.

It is worth noting that the bug can also affect users who do not have any Apple Home device added on their iPhone. This can happen if you accept an invitation to a Home that contains a HomeKit device with a large string as its name. Although 500,000 characters may seem like a too lengthy name for any device, if attackers want to exploit this vulnerability, they can likely send you an Home invitation through iPhones that are still running on iOS 15 or older.

As per the researcher, if you do not have Home devices enabled in your iPhone’s Control Center, the Home app will become completely unusable, crashing upon launch. Rebooting or updating the device does not resolve the problem if you are triggered by this bug. He also reveals that if your iPhone does have Home devices enabled in the Control Center, the bug can make iOS unresponsive. All input to the device will be ignored or significantly delayed, and it will be unable to meaningfully communicate over USB.

Trevor claims that the bug was initially reported to Apple on August 10 and the company promised to fix the issue in a security update prior to 2022. Now, the tech giant says that it will revisit the issue in early 2022. It is not yet known when the company will roll out an update to fix the bug but it is expected that it will be available with the next iOS update.

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