New Instagram Story Is Gratingly Designed To Crash Your iPhone Or Android Phone
By Mikelle Leow, 17 May 2021
Image via Michele Ursi / Shutterstock.com
Even if you’re pressed for time, you’ll likely still engage with others through their Instagram stories. Instead of the time-sucking habit of mindless scrolling, the social media platform has acclimatized users to watch their friends’ stories by placing the feature at the top of home feeds.
There’s nothing wrong with staying updated with someone’s life now and then, but if there’s one Instagram story you should be warned about opening, it’s the one created by user @pgtalal. The post was deliberately created to crash smartphones, whether they’re iOS or Android devices.
The visual itself looks pretty innocuous; it’s of a gray screen with a line of random text. However, anyone who viewed this highlight or similar stories in early May would have had their phones frozen—even outside of Instagram.
Junior security researcher Ananay Arora inspected the story’s code and found that the uploader inserted two ridiculously large stickers inside the post, forcing a rendering issue and causing phones to crash. In contrast with the usual stickers, which would only measure between zero to one inch in size, the stickers the user embedded into the story stretch about 10 million inches in height and width.
The upside is that there’s no virus hidden in there; it’s just a file too large for Instagram to support and an overall annoyance to deal with.
YouTuber Mrwhosetheboss, who managed to get ahold of the Instagram account, discovered that the person behind @pgtala is a 14-year-old hacker.
The user has since taken down the glitchy story highlight.
Instagram has also fixed the issue, such that the story will no longer drive devices to crash. However, Arora notes that tapping on stories with a similar setup by other accounts can still cause your Instagram app—rather than your entire phone—to be buggy.
The Instagram story highlight has a quiz, countdown and a question on the story which is wayyy out of bounds and the size is HUGE. This causes a rendering issue. pic.twitter.com/iHGItxSF7Y
— Ananay (@ananayarora) May 1, 2021
Instagram Story crashes Smartphones, try it yourself: @pgtalal from
ProgrammerHumor
Warning: Don’t open @ pgtalal instagram stories!
— Horack_K (@horack_k) May 10, 2021
My curiosity: pic.twitter.com/DcJUatpsJD
- This is not the same as the old iMessage bug
— Ananay (@ananayarora) May 1, 2021
- Do not panic. Your phone is SAFE, there's nothing wrong - you haven't been hacked or anything.
- This is a bug on Instagram's side where they're not checking for sticker's x,y coords and width and height to be within limits.
People visiting the @instagram profile @Pgtalal and clicking on its Story Highlights are left with a crashed phone. He used #HTTP Proxy for this huge sticker size, which allows him to see and modify things being posted before they reach the app's servers. #cybersecurity #tech pic.twitter.com/I78T6TUZGN
— IEDC TKMCE (@iedctkmce) May 8, 2021
Update: As of now, stories can no longer crash your entire device! @/pgtalal has taken the story down that crashes your phone. This glitch has been fixed by Instagram!
— Ananay (@ananayarora) May 8, 2021
The issue that crashes the Instagram app after viewing a specially crafted story still persists!
[via Wccftech, Republic World and Mrwhosetheboss, cover image via Michele Ursi / Shutterstock.com]