tiptop - unearthly bugsin Messages arenothingnew , but this late one is a material head - scratcher : If you attempt to transmit an audio substance with the phrase “ Dave and Buster ’s , ” it wo n’t work . Why would that specific verbiage cause a job ? A coding expert has cracked the case . I wo n’t say “ and the reason will scandalise you , ” but if you ’re anything like me , you ’ll find it interesting .
First , let me explain what happens when the bug triggers . At first , the audio subject matter ( “ I ’m off to eat up tiffin at Dave and Buster ’s , ” as an example ) appear to send normally . It shows up in the Messages thread to the receiver , along with a copy of the capacity . No problem is flagged .
It ’s at the recipient role ’s end that we fleck the issue . ab initio the recipient see the ellipsis icon , point that something is being type or sent … but this carries on , and carries on , and eventually disappear . And at this point there is no indication that anything has been sent at all : no substance , no content transcript , no substance failed telling . In fact , if the receiver did n’t happen to have the app capable , or had it open but was in a different conversation screw thread , they never would have get laid something was supposed to be on the way .
The phrase “Dave and Buster’s” doesn’t cause a problem in the U.K. because iOS doesn’t add an ampersand (or even an apostrophe).
This bug is new to me , and the first time I heard about it was when it wasdiscussed on Mondayin the blog run by Guilherme Rambo , a coding and engineering expert . Rambo , in bit , take heed about the bug on theSearch Engine podcast , which give its May 9 episode to the study .
Rambo reproduced the germ , guessed the problem must be at the recipient ending , then secure that gadget into his Mac and start looking at logs . And from that point it does n’t appear to have take long for him to mold out what was going on : iOS ’s transcription engine was recognizing the name of the U.S. eating house chain of mountains , changing it to the right corporate stigmatisation ( “ Dave & Buster ’s , ” with an all - important ampersand ) , and then passingthatinto the XHTML code used to send a copy with the audio subject matter . The problem is n’t being make by the Book Dave and Buster ’s , but by the ampersand character between them , which has a special role in put one across and prevents the code from being parse correctly .
David Price / Foundry
The phrase “Dave and Buster’s” doesn’t cause a problem in the U.K. because iOS doesn’t add an ampersand (or even an apostrophe).
As you could see in the image at the top of this account , a apparently successfully sent audio iMessage end with the idiomatic expression “ Dave & Buster ’s ” appears as ship but never in reality appear on the recipient ’s telephone . After a while , the audio content disappeared from the sender ’s speech sound , and the receiver was altogether incognizant that the message had ever been send .
With that in mind , it ’s a unretentive leap to recognise that other brand could cause the same issue — they just have n’t been spotted doing so up to now . Rambo notes that “ M&Ms ” will do the same thing . For U.K. iPhone possessor , in fact , “ Dave and Buster’s”doesn’ttrigger the microbe because that chemical chain is evidently not well enough have it off here and does n’t get its ampersand lend by autocorrect .
To multiply the proceeds , I had to take a champion to institutionalise me a content about the supermarket chain M&S. for sure enough , this caused the hanging ellipsis followed by an unsent substance . At the time of writing , it seems almost certain that any phrase iOS would recognize as containing an ampersand would cause an audio message to fail , and when I put it like that , it ’s surprising the bug has n’t been more wide reported .
But here’s what happens when a U.K. user tries to send a message about the supermarket chain M&S, complete with ampersand.
Karen Haslam / Foundry
On the plus side , one would opine it ’s a bug that should be soft to patch up in an iOS update . The recording feature of speech in Messages just needs to be severalise to“escape ” special charactersso they do n’t mess up the parsing procedure . And as Rambo notes , this is n’t a hemipteron with any security vulnerability ; indeed , it shew Apple ’s BlastDoor mechanics working correctly .
“ Many bad parsers would probably accept the incorrectly - formatted XHTML , ” he writes , “ but that kind of leniency when parse data formats is often what ends up causing security measures issue . By being pedantic about the data formatting , BlastDoor is protect the recipient from an exploit that would abuse that case of issue . ”
