Pure CSS crashes iPhones affects some browsers

Martin Brinkmann
Sep 17, 2018
Internet
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6

A couple of lines of code that runs in any modern web browser by default may crash Apple's Safari web browser, iPhones and affects select browsers as well.

The code uses the backdrop-filter property and a lot of Div elements (more than 3000) to crash Apple iPhones immediately and freeze certain browsers even on non-iOS systems.

safari css dos

The code was published on GitHub today in readable format and as executable code. I won't link to the demonstration page but you can access the linked resource above and click on the link there to test your browser.

According to the developer, the code will restart iOS 9 and higher devices when webpages that contain it are loaded on the device. Some browsers may freeze or crash as well but I could not verify that.

Safari on Mac OS X devices is affected as well and loading the demo webpage in Safari may require a forced restart and may be the beginning of a vicious cycle as the operating system may open Safari automatically and with it the webpage with the code which in turn may require another restart.

ie crash

Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge display notifications that they could not load the webpage while Opera, Google Chrome and Firefox load the webpage just fine.

Reports suggest that some versions of Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge may be affected as well. Günter Born confirmed that the page crashed Internet Explorer 11 on a Windows 7 system. Neowin suggests that Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer or Safari may freeze when webpages are loaded.

Other browsers on iOS may certainly affected by this as well as as they are forced to use the same rendering engine.

The developer promises code to crash or freeze Firefox in the coming week. Obviously, there is always the chance that browsers crash when certain code is loaded on webpages. While this should not happen, no browser seems to be exempt from that.

The same developer released a one-liner, JavaScript this time, that freezes Google Chrome and ChromeOS.

There is little that Internet users can do to avoid this issue. CSS instructions are executed on load and may be added to any webpage; this is different from JavaScript which users may block from execution by using programs such as uBlock Origin, uMatrix, or NoScript.

It is up to the browser's developers to fix the issue. While it does lead to freezes or crashes only, it may lead to data loss due to that.

Now You: Is your browser affected by the issue?

Summary
Pure CSS crashes iPhones affects some browsers
Article Name
Pure CSS crashes iPhones affects some browsers
Description
A couple of lines of code that runs in any modern web browser by default may crash Apple's Safari web browser, iPhones and affects select browsers as well.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
    Reply

    Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on August 4, 2012 at 7:57 pm
      Reply

      Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.

    2. Leonidas Burton said on September 4, 2023 at 4:51 am
      Reply

      I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
      http://www.google.com/saved

  2. VioletMoon said on August 16, 2023 at 5:26 pm
    Reply

    @Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!

  3. Karl said on August 17, 2023 at 10:36 pm
    Reply

    @Martin

    The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
    https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/

    Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.

  4. Anonymous said on August 25, 2023 at 11:44 am
    Reply

    Omg a badge!!!
    Some tangible reward lmao.

    It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.

  5. Scroogled said on August 25, 2023 at 10:57 pm
    Reply

    With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.

    1. lollmaoeven said on August 27, 2023 at 6:24 am
      Reply

      This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)

  6. El Duderino said on August 25, 2023 at 11:14 pm
    Reply

    Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.

    And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.

  7. John G. said on August 26, 2023 at 1:29 am
    Reply

    First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm

    For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[

  8. Kalmly said on August 26, 2023 at 4:42 pm
    Reply

    Yes. Please. Fix the comments.

  9. Kim Schmidt said on September 3, 2023 at 3:42 pm
    Reply

    With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.

    Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.

    The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.

    If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.

    And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.

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