iPhone Networking Flaw Reportedly Disabling Wi-Fi Support, Users Share Tedious Workarounds

Reverse engineer and Secret Club founder Carl Schou says one can permanently disable any iOS device's Wi-Fi by hosting a public Wi-Fi named %secretclub%power.

By Tasneem Akolawala | Updated: 5 July 2021 17:52 IST

iPhone Networking Flaw Reportedly Disabling Wi-Fi Support, Users Share Tedious Workarounds

iPhone is said to lose support for Wi-Fi if connected to a specific public Wi-Fi

Highlights

Wi-Fi network named %secretclub%power said to permanently disable support
Restoring the device using iTunes reportedly helps resolve the problem
iPhone users are advised to do a backup before trying workarounds

iPhone's networking functionality reportedly has a new flaw that leads to disabling its Wi-Fi support completely if connected to a specific public Wi-Fi network. This flaw is said to affect any iPhone, and resetting the device's network settings does not seem to solve the problem. Reverse engineer and Secret Club founder Carl Schou says that a Wi-Fi network called "%secretclub%power" can disable Wi-Fi of any iPhone that is connected to it. Users have taken to Twitter to share workarounds to this iPhone networking issue and one of them includes restoring the device using iTunes.

Schou took to Twitter claiming that users can permanently disable any iOS device's Wi-Fi by hosting a public Wi-Fi named %secretclub%power. He tried to reset his network settings but that didn't restore the iPhone's functionality, nor did a force restart help in solving the issue. Users on Twitter have suggested that fixing the problem requires one to "manually remove" information from "com.apple.wifi.known-networks.plist", repack it, and then do device restore.

Some users on Twitter claim that restoring the device using iTunes also helps resolve the problem but this may lead to loss of data as well. Remember to do a backup of data before beginning the workaround process. As mentioned, this flaw could lead to the complete disabling of Wi-Fi support on any iPhone and the suggested workaround is also a very complicated procedure.

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A similar flaw was found by Schou in June when he reported that naming a network "%p%s%s%s%s%n" could also disable the Wi-Fi support of any iPhone that gets connected to it. Back then, the issue could be fixed by resetting the network settings, but the new flaw does not solve the issue with just that. Users have to do a lot more this time around, and most of them would be unaware of the process, forcing them to head for customer support.

In order to manually restore your device using iTunes, follow the steps mentioned in Apple's support guide.

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Gadgets 360 has reached out to Apple to get more information about the issue and its fix. We will update this article when we get a response.

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