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by John W. Simek, Vice President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.

Special Wi-Fi Network Name Crashes iPhones

June 23, 2021

Are you an iPhone user? Be very, very careful about which Wi-Fi network you connect to. You should always be careful when connecting to networks, especially those you are not familiar with. The unfortunate reality is that a significant number of users really don’t care. They only want free access to the internet. BleepingComputer has a post to make you think twice about blindly connecting to a Wi-Fi network.

Apparently, there is an iPhone bug that will bork your Wi-Fi if you connect to a network named %p%s%s%s%s%n. Once you connect, your phone will go bonkers and will not be able to connect to another Wi-Fi network even if the phone is rebooted. The only way to fix your broken iPhone is to reset your network settings.

  1. Go to Settings -> General
  2. Select Reset
  3. Select Reset Network Settings
  4. Enter your passcode to confirm

You will be able to connect to Wi-Fi networks following a restart. It’s pretty obvious that you won’t have a problem in the first place if you didn’t connect to an unknown network. Duh.

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