Every now and then, certain bugs are discovered in iOS that causes some functionality issues with the iPhone. The latest bug, identified by reverse engineer Carl Shou, causes the iPhone’s Wi-Fi functionality to completely break when it connects to a Wi-Fi with a particular SSID.
The Wi-Fi network that can create problems in the iPhone has a SSID “%p%s%s%s%s%n”. If an iPhone running iOS 14.6 connects to this particular Wi-Fi SSID, it causes the Wi-Fi Setting page to behave highly erratically and will always end up in the iPhone’s Wi-Fi functionality to become disabled completely.
There is a way to fix this issue, however. All the user needs to do is reset the iPhone’s network settings, which can be done by following these steps:
- Settings ⇾ General ⇾ Reset
- Select “Reset Network Settings”
Once selected, the iPhone should restart and reset all the network settings. Users will be able to re-enter their Wi-Fi credentials and be able to connect to their regular networks.
The problem only appears to affect iOS so far, and Android smartphones remain unaffected. The exact reason behind this bug is unclear, although researchers have pointed towards an input parsing issue being the possible reason. Software coded in C and C-Style languages often face issues with strings that have a “%” sign in them, and it is likely causing some issue in iOS.