Connecting to malicious Wi-Fi networks can mess with your iPhone

Enlarge (credit: Apple)

There's a bug in iOS that disables Wi-Fi connectivity when devices join a network that uses a booby-trapped name, a researcher disclosed over the weekend.

By connecting to a Wi-Fi network that uses the SSID %p%s%s%s%s%n" (quotation marks not included), iPhones and iPads lose the ability to join that network or any other networks going forward, reverse-]engineer Carl Schou reported on Twitter.

After joining my personal WiFi with the SSID %p%s%s%s%s%n", my iPhone permanently disabled it's WiFi functionality. Neither rebooting nor changing SSID fixes it :~) pic.twitter.com/2eue90JFu3

- Carl Schou (@vm_call) June 18, 2021

It didn't take long for trolls to capitalize on the finding:

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