New iPhone Wi‑Fi Crash: The %SecretClub%power SSID Vulnerability Explained
Security researcher Carl Schou has uncovered a new iPhone Wi‑Fi vulnerability where connecting to a network named “%SecretClub%power” crashes the device’s Wi‑Fi, cannot be fixed by resetting network settings, and may require a full data wipe, highlighting iOS’s flawed percent‑sign parsing.
Earlier we reported an Apple Wi‑Fi vulnerability where setting the network name to “%p%s%s%s%s%n” caused iPhone Wi‑Fi to crash, requiring a network‑settings reset to recover.
Security researcher Carl Schou recently disclosed a more severe flaw: connecting to a Wi‑Fi network named “%SecretClub%power” renders the iPhone’s Wi‑Fi unusable, and even resetting network settings does not help; the only remedy is a full data wipe.
The issue stems from iOS’s input‑parsing logic, which mistakenly treats characters following a percent sign as commands rather than plain text, leading to the Wi‑Fi malfunction.
Users who tested the bug reported that devices running iOS 15 Public Beta 1 were immediately affected, while an iPhone 11 Pro Max on iOS 14.6 showed no abnormal behavior.
Because the exact trigger conditions remain unclear, it is advisable to avoid connecting to Wi‑Fi networks whose SSID begins with a percent sign.
For reference, the following images illustrate the vulnerable SSIDs and test results.
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Programmer DD
A tinkering programmer and author of "Spring Cloud Microservices in Action"
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