Lakshmi Kothaneth -
Muscat, Feb 20 -
Many thought it was just a prank and tried to forward it only to find their Apple devices crash.
A certain letter in Telugu language, an Indian language, seemed to cause the crash.
Texting the particular link meant freezing of the device, which would go into the restart mode.
No wonder, ‘How to fix the Telugu character bug’ was the most-typed query on popular browsers in the last few days in the Sultanate.
According to Haitham al Hajri, a cyber security expert in the Sultanate, “The issue was reported a few days ago. The character triggers a bug in different apps such as Twitter, WhatsApp and Facebook.”
According to him, handsets could not recognise the Telugu character.
It was learned the character made the device crash and the users had to sign in again with their PIN. This matter has been addressed by Apple through the release of an update.”
While many found their own ways to overcome the glitch, which was experienced only by Apple users.
To their relief, Apple released iOS 11.2.6 to sort out the problem.
Al Hajri said the people facing the problem should log in and delete the thread which has the Telugu character in it so that they can use it again.
At the same, he warned: “Do not open any suspicious links or repost that character because some iPhone users might get affected.”
He said people might have thought of it as a joke and forwarded it, but in reality it has caused a lot of hassle for those who needed to retrieve important data.
The letter that caused the crash is currently not in use in Telugu script and it is an old alphabet, said the
Telugu speakers that Observer spoke to. Nasser al Harrasi, one of the victims, was stuck without WhatsApp until he accessed his account via his laptop. “Once I cancelled the message, everything was back to normal. But I am now helping my friends resolve the problem. Many of them received this forward.”
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