Social media, a link that promises to crash computers, and the endless curiosity of users. What could go wrong? The point is that in the last few hours, the link to a page called crashsafari.com gained viral relevance as it spread across the Web. Among the most serious effects we find spontaneous restarts of Apple devices, but everything seems to indicate that the same link doesn't do any favors to Android and Windows systems…
A historic scene from the game Maniac Mansion is the red button scene. The warning leaves no doubt: NEVER PRESS. However, we all know what happens in the adventure afterwards. Why? Because we press the button, of course! Rebellion? Curiosity? Temptation? Or maybe simple boredom? The human being reacts very particularly to a prohibition, and the web is no exception. You just have to see what a small link caused. Its name is already quite suspicious: crashsafari.com (we won't make it an active link for obvious reasons). Apparently it's a joke aimed at Safari users on iOS and OS X, but its simplicity borders on the diabolical.
The description of the link/joke/bug/attack is that its code triggers a chain of text that automatically generates in the address bar. During the first twenty seconds, an iPhone will raise its temperature, trying to respond to the code's demands, and then restart itself. Something similar happens on iPads, and there are also reports of builds of Safari crashing on OS X. Yet Crash Safari is not exclusive to Apple systems. Many Android users tried it in Chrome, and although it didn't freeze their devices, the browser process crashed. On the Windows side, I've noticed that Internet Explorer 11 shows good resistance, but Firefox enters an existential crisis while trying to load the link, until a warning appears to stop the script.
That said… there you have your red button. If you're going to try it, make sure you've saved all the information loaded in your current session, because we don't know exactly how the browser will react. The latest information indicates that Apple has acknowledged the problem and is already working on a patch for its flagship software.
