h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If you have an Apple mobile device, you will occasionally be prompted to install the latest version of the operating system. It’s a good idea not to delay this too long, as one thing the new versions do is to fix the latest security vulnerabilities.

I was idly reading through a list of these security fixes for one of these releases which came out last October - it was for version 10.1 if you must know. If you’re really interested (and I don’t recommend it) you can read all about it here:

http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207271


Now, one of these caught my eye. One of the ways your phone can be compromised is through graphics, specifically:

“Viewing a maliciously crafted JPEG file may lead to arbitrary code execution”


Well, I’m no expert, but is this true? Are there malicious graphics out there which can hack our technology?

Is it time to declare War on Photos? To outlaw selfies? To vet all visual representions?

If I was Donald Trump, I’d stop paintings entering the country. Best be sure.


What say you?

I watched part of a "Spy Hacks" video yesterday that featured minimally malicious hack for iPhones. If this was valid, you can send a simple message to an iPhone user that will temporarily "brick" their phone. The message a flag emoji, O, and a rainbow emoji. The "O" may have been an emoji as well as it was described as such in teh video. According to the video, this causes the iPhone to try to render a rainbow flag using up all its resources causing it to freeze and require a restart or wait 3 minutes or both. I wasn't paying that much attention.

Yes, it's amazing what people discover. It makes you wonder what other weird ways there are to arrange our text, graphics and emojis to crash the device.





(just testing)

Oh, that just indicates that Z is going on a ski vacation.

In London?

...
Yeah!

BG, that 'hack' sounds like the old fax attack strategy: faxing people endless copies of a completely black page, so they'd use up all their toner.

This is actually why I use my phone to make phone calls. How retro of me...

I bought one of those temporary phones, and used it so little that I never used up the allowed calls. I think the term expired about 18 months ago.....