New malformed Wi-Fi name bug can require iPhone factory reset to fix

appleinsider.com

The description circulating the internets is very vague, involves some obscure personal(?) hotspot...

Not going to torture my gadgets, but looks like saving networks with ESSID "%p%s%s%s%s%n" causing wifid to crash on WFLog:message

Should also work with configuring network with such ESSID manually. The other sprintf specifiers in ESSID should work too.

> factory reset

Not that bad, Reset Network Settings fixes.

https://blog.chichou.me/2021/06/20/quick-analysis-wifid/

Read the article, That's the old one. He found a new one "%secretclub%power" that resetting network settings didn't fix.

Current solution [1] seems to involve backing up your iPhone locally, removing the offending SSID from a plist (com.apple.wifi.plist?), and restoring your iPhone from that backup.

[1]: https://twitter.com/vm_call/status/1411753482437148683

re: exploitability – I think its still open question and highly depends on when WFLog logs ESSID...

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