Twitter fixes bug that crashed its iOS app
The bug appeared to stem from a tweet that contained a link with code from character converter Punycode. Troublemakers then decided to share the link to intentionally crash other people's apps.
Twitter has squashed a bug that prompted people's iOS app to crash anytime they viewed a specific link -- even if they didn't click on it.
The bug itself appeared to stem from a tweet that contained a link with code from character converter Punycode. The converter allows certain non-text characters, such as emoji or umlauts, to be displayed. Reportedly discovered by tweeter @CPVideoMaker, the specific tweet in question caused the Twitter app to crash for the iPhone and iPad, The Next Web reported.
Although one tweet shouldn't impact many people, the problem is that you didn't need to click on the link -- you only needed to view it to crash the Twitter app. In addition, some people started sharing the specific code to intentionally cause others' apps to crash, which then resulted in people complaining to Twitter that the app was crashing.
Twitter stepped in to resolve the issue.
A tweet posted Monday by Michael Margolis, software engineering manager at Twitter, said the issue should now be resolved and asked whether anyone was still having problems. Almost all of the responders said the problem was fixed, though one person claimed the crashes were still happening on iOS 8.1 on an iPhone 6 Plus.
Twitter did not immediately respond to CNET's request for comment.