Apple quietly fixed a bug in iOS 11 that crashed iOS devices when users typed “Taiwan”

iOS 11.3 and below suffered from a bug that crashed iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices when users entered the word “Taiwan” in Messages, Facebook, WhatsApp and other text fields.

This was first discovered by Digital Security’s chief research officer Patrick Wardle, via Axios, who detailed the issue in a lengthy post yesterday to his personal blog, Objective-See.

The California firm removed the Taiwan flag emoji from devices in China in an effort to bow to the Chinese government demands. The removal of code that hides the Taiwanese flag emoji on devices set to the China region caused unexpected crashes on devices set to other regions.

iOS 11.4.1 has patched this issue.

Apple previously placated to the Chinese government’s demands by removing many unauthorized VPN apps from the Chinese App Store, as well as news apps like The New York Times. In April 2016, a Chinese state agency shut down iTunes Movies and iBooks Store in the country over the release of a controversial independent dystopian film, “Ten Years”.

Thoughts?