iOS bug means glitchy videos can kill any iPhone or iPad

iPhone users are familiar with strange bugs that crop up from time to time that can, temporarily at least, kill their cell phone. We've seen specially-crafted text messages crash iPhones, and now there is a video which can render Apple smartphones useless -- until they are restarted, that is.

The video takes advantage of a bug in iOS relating to the handling of media files, and it appears to affect both iPhones and iPads. The model of phone or tablet doesn’t seem to matter, and the problem affects iOS 10 and goes back as far as iOS 5. So, if you feel like pranking a friend -- or you're just curious -- here's how to kill an iOS device.

As you can see from the video below, crashing an iPhone or iPad is incredibly simple -- you just need to play a particular video. The crash will not be immediate; in fact, at first it will appear that there is nothing amiss. But after a few seconds or minutes -- depending on the device and version of iOS that's being hit -- the device will slow down, and slow down, and slow down... and eventually stop responding to anything. After a quick restart, however, everything is back to normal and there is no lasting damage.

Check out the prank in action:

The problem stems from the fact that the 'prank' video is corrupt; it plays, but there are errors in it. The way iOS handles problematic videos is what leads to the crash.

Oh, and the video you need can be found here: http://goo.gl/9AUh8A

Apple has not commented on the bug, but it looks like there could be a patch issued to address the problem -- could really old versions of iOS be in line for a fix?