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iPhone crash? Might have been China's dislike for Taiwan's flag

Censorship to appease China apparently led to a bug that crashed iPhones when the Taiwan emoji was used, Wired reports.

Abrar Al-Heeti Technology Reporter
Abrar Al-Heeti is a technology reporter for CNET, with an interest in phones, streaming, internet trends, entertainment, pop culture and digital accessibility. She's also worked for CNET's video, culture and news teams. She graduated with bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Though Illinois is home, she now loves San Francisco -- steep inclines and all.
Expertise Abrar has spent her career at CNET analyzing tech trends while also writing news, reviews and commentaries across mobile, streaming and online culture. Credentials
  • Named a Tech Media Trailblazer by the Consumer Technology Association in 2019, a winner of SPJ NorCal's Excellence in Journalism Awards in 2022 and has three times been a finalist in the LA Press Club's National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards.
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A censorship feature used in Apple software reportedly had a bug that crashed iPhones when an emoji of the Taiwanese flag was displayed. 

Since the beginning of 2017, Apple's iOS mobile software has reportedly contained a censorship function that disappears the Taiwanese flag emoji when an iPhone's location setting is switched to China, which doesn't recognize the island's independence. Texts featuring the art simply show a "missing" emoji. 

Security researcher Patrick Wardle found that a bug in the code would sometimes consider the Taiwan emoji to be an invalid input, rather than an element missing from the phone's library, according to Wired. The bug caused iPhones to crash.  

Wardle informed Apple about the bug and helped the company fix it, which Apple noted in a security update on Monday. Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The bug enabled anyone to crash a vulnerable device by merely sending a text message with the Taiwanese flag. 

Apple has reportedly catered to the Chinese government before, moving Chinese Apple users' data to servers within the country, as well as removing some VPNs from the App Store in China.