Siri, please save my iPhone from the messages of death

So Apple failed at the basics

ie, never trust user entered data, always, ALWAYS sanitise it before acting on it.

Hell, I didn't trust the OS, always, always did a sanity check on everything from it. [I didn't trust my code, sanity checking (contracts between blocks) too.]

Wait?

didnt this happen and get patched last year? Is this another string of text or just a hopelessly out of date article?

So Apple thought Siri wasn't getting used enough

and introduced this novel promotional tool to get iTards talking to their shiny stuff.

Apple or NSA?

This smells of the kind of thing the NSA would insist upon as a back door. Then again Apple is on record claiming no back doors so perhaps an employee acted alone.

Not Just Notifications (Maybe)

"it will crash an iThing when it is displayed as a notification"

Anecdotally it would appear, on the 5C at least, to crash the phone when opening the messaging app too, rather than just viewing the notification. Then again, the phone belongs to the girlfriend of my nephew and, considering both are in their late teens, neither of them are that technologically minded so when they say it also crashes by going directly into the messaging app I'm not entirely convinced they're directly going into the messaging app.

Anyway, a factory reset solved the problem (until the next numpty sends the message again!)

Much easier

.. Just go into "Edit" and delete the whole conversation, without opening the specific message. Someboy sends you a "prank", they can get stuffed anyway.

There is already a fix for jailbroken iphones running iOS 8: "IneffectivePower" in the Cydia store.