VIRUS through iMessage affecting iWatch and 3 iPhone 6 Plus's

Either have the person who sent it send another iMessage or use Siri to send yourself an iMessage.

Just to be clear, this is not a virus and your phones have not been infected with malware.

There is no security risk. It is an iOS bug that is being exploited. I am sure Apple is working on a patch.

In the meantime there are some things we can try.

Have you tried turning off iMessage?
Settings > Messages > turn iMessage off

Delete the message then try turning iMessage back on

korpit wrote:

Our son was sent a virus by text message. He received it and was told that it was a funny prank to turn off others phones so he sent it to one of our phones. Now my son's brand-new one-week-old iWatch (that he saved forever for), iPhone and my husband's iPhone will NOT work with text. Our other child received the same text from a friend and it happened as well.

I am livid at the moment and have no idea how to fix this. $4000 worth of products.

Contact Apple Support with the problem - don't believe Apple magically knows about this type of issue without being informed of it by a user.

True of all IT -- if you don't report a problem through proper channels it can remain a problem with the software for a very long time.

Your children have learned an important lesson about pranks - and as they passed it on to your devices -- if there is a service charge he should be the one to pay for it - not you.

Axeman1020 wrote:

Just to be clear, this is not a virus and your phones have not been infected with malware.

There is no security risk. It is an iOS bug that is being exploited. I am sure Apple is working on a patch.

If apple is not informed about a bug by the user who finds it -- it does not get fixed -- so OP need to contact apple before messing around with trying resets that will muddy the trail.

notcloudy wrote:

If apple is not informed about a bug by the user who finds it -- it does not get fixed -- so OP need to contact apple before messing around with trying resets that will muddy the trail.

It certainly is not a bad idea for the OP to contact Apple regarding the bug but Apple is aware of the issue.

They have been contacted by numerous users as well as media outlets.

korpit wrote:

I will contact Apple when I have the watch and phone back at home.

Aside from that, I do know how to parent. Our middle-schooler has had strong limits on being able to even use anything and we just enabled a restricted Safari this past week. His friend sent a group 'bug' to a bunch of friends telling them that it simply turns off the other person's phone one time. Why would a child with limited experience know that this would create all of this? I certainly did not and had not experienced it before. We have 3 Macs, 6 iPhones, Apple TV, and now an iWatch (sold 3 iPads when they all stopped working after a few years).

Our other child did not forward the message but deleted it/rebooted bc of more experience and having known there was an issue a few years back...which I was not aware of.

Our son worked his tail off with chores, extra work, and getting straight A's and scrimped and saved to get that stupid watch which is less than a week old and he is so upset about this entire thing.

You have done nothing wrong here.

Unfortunately, there are always going to be people who take pleasure in causing trouble.

The internet is a powerful tool and it can be used to broadcast these types of things quickly.

There was something similar about a year or so again and Apple quickly issued a patch.

In the meantime, it certainly wouldn't hurt to disable iMessage and use regular SMS for texting.

Have you tried disabling iMessage and deleting the problem message?

There are some potential solutions here:

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/05/26/ios-bug-crashing-iphones-with-text-message/

Also, if there are any Macs set to receive texts that are received by the affected phones, try opening Messages on those Macs and deleting the conversation containing that malicious message.

If nothing else works, you should be able to restore the devices to a previous backup, or if they haven't been backed up, to factory defaults.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1414

Send a random photo or a screenshot to the person who sent you the message but do it through the Photos app.

You should then be able to get back into Messages and delete the thread.

notcloudy wrote:

OP need to contact apple before messing around with trying resets that will muddy the trail.

Not necessary. Apple is already aware of the issue and working on a fix.

Here are a few fixes that users have discovered:

• Have the person who sent you the malicious message send another message effectively canceling out the initial strand
• Alternatively, send yourself a message via Siri, the share sheet, or from your Mac.
• Another reader notes that “sending a photo to the contact via the Photos app can allow them to access the message history and delete the conversation”

These fixes should do the trick while we await an official fix from Apple in an upcoming software update.

An Apple spokesperson already confirmed it’s working on a fix that will deploy in a future update:

“We are aware of an iMessage issue caused by a specific series of unicode characters and we will make a fix available in a software update.”

Here's a fix from another thread....worked like a charm!

.......

the Solution 2 step:

1-put your iPhone date two month forward

2-go to settings > Messages >(under Message History, select keep messages 30 day)

NB: this will fix the problem but will delete all your messages inbox.