Did you know that you can block an iPhone with a specific network name, today we are going to show you how to do it. Surely you remember the bug that caused certain Wi-Fi networks to block, redundantly, the iPhone’s Wi-Fi. It was discovered that Wi-Fi hotspots with certain characters in their name could almost permanently disable the Wi-Fi connection of iPhones. The problem now appears to have been identified.
How to block an iPhone with a specific network name?
While there is no official explanation from Apple, cybersecurity researchers have been digging into the issue. In fact, the flaw was precisely discovered by a researcher, who found that WiFi hotspots named %p%s%s%s%s%s%s%n were blocking iPhone’s connectivity.
The key would be in the percentage characters (%). These characters, used in programming languages, are the cause of the problem and the most serious thing is that it has been discovered that the bug blocking iPhone’s Wi-Fi could be solved only in some cases by resetting the network settings.
Why does this happen?
This has been reconfirmed by the cybersecurity researcher Carl Schou, a member of the Secret Club group, who has tested connecting to a Wi-Fi hotspot with the name %secretclub%power. It is a name similar to %p%s%s%s%s%s%s%n that we saw weeks ago.
You can permanently disable any iOS device's WiFI by hosting a public WiFi named %secretclub%power
Resetting network settings is not guaranteed to restore functionality.#infosec #0day— vmcall (@vm_call) July 4, 2021
Schou specifies that resetting the device or resetting the network settings is not a guaranteed solution.
According to the experts, the percent symbol (%) is used in programming languages to format certain variables. If Wi-Fi connects to a network with percentages in its name, and the system misinterprets this symbol, this way the device malfunctions.
Schou discovers a way to reverse this problem, but it is far from being accessible to users. The user must edit an iPhone backup to remove ‘malicious’ entries with a .plist extension from the networks remembered by the phone. This backup is restored with the deleted entries, and that’s it.
However, this requires some technical development skills, in the hands of an inexperienced user, this could cause even more problems.
As we have said, Apple still hasn’t commented on this subject. We don’t recommend you to connect to a network with a name including the percentage (%) symbol.