Why the iPhone's Messages App Refuses Audio Messages That Mention 'Dave & Buster's' (rambo.codes)
(Sunday May 25, 2025 @11:34PM (EditorDavid)
from the voodoo-pasta dept.)
- Reference: 0177758939
- News link: https://apple.slashdot.org/story/25/05/26/0159210/why-the-iphones-messages-app-refuses-audio-messages-that-mention-dave-busters
- Source link: https://rambo.codes/posts/2025-05-12-cracking-the-dave-and-busters-anomaly
Earlier this month app developer Guilherme Rambo [1]had a warning for iPhone users :
> If you try to send an audio message using the Messages app to someone who's also using the Messages app, and that message happens to include the name "Dave and Buster's", the message will never be received.
>
> In case you're wondering, "Dave and Buster's" is the name of a sports bar and restaurant in the United States... [T]he recipient will only see the "dot dot dot" animation for several seconds, and it will then eventually disappear. They will never get the audio message.
"The issue was first spotted [2]on the podcast Search Engine ..." according to [3]an article in Fortune :
> Rambo's explanation of the curiosity goes like this.
>
> "When you send an audio message using the Messages app, the message includes a transcription of the audio. If you happen to pronounce the name 'Dave and Buster's' as someone would normally pronounce it, almost like it's a single word, the transcription engine on iOS will recognize the brand name and correctly write it as 'Dave & Buster's' (with an ampersand)," he begins. So far, so good." [But ampersands have special meaning in HTML/XHTML...] And, [4]as MacRumors puts it : "The parsing error triggers Apple's BlastDoor Messages feature that protects users from malicious messages that might rely on problematic parsing, so ultimately, the audio message fails to send."
To solve the mystery, Rambo "plugged the recipient device into my Mac and captured the logs right after the device received the problematic message." Their final thoughts...
> Since BlastDoor [5]was designed to thwart hacking attempts, which frequently rely on faulty data parsing, it immediately stops what it's doing and just fails. That's what causes the message to get stuck in the "dot dot dot" state, which eventually times out, and the message just disappears. On the surface, this does sound like it could be used to "hack" someone's iPhone via a bad audio message transcription, but in reality what this bug demonstrates is that Apple's BlastDoor mechanism is working as designed.
>
> Many bad parsers would probably accept the incorrectly-formatted XHTML, but that sort of leniency when parsing data formats is often what ends up causing security issues. By being pedantic about the formatting, BlastDoor is protecting the recipient from an exploit that would abuse that type of issue.
[1] https://rambo.codes/posts/2025-05-12-cracking-the-dave-and-busters-anomaly
[2] https://www.searchengine.show/the-dave-and-busters-anomaly/
[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidphelan/2025/05/14/apple-iphone-has-the-weirdest-new-bug-dont-send-these-imessages/
[4] https://www.macrumors.com/2025/05/12/apple-ampersand-messages-bug/
[5] https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/security/secd3c881cee/web
> If you try to send an audio message using the Messages app to someone who's also using the Messages app, and that message happens to include the name "Dave and Buster's", the message will never be received.
>
> In case you're wondering, "Dave and Buster's" is the name of a sports bar and restaurant in the United States... [T]he recipient will only see the "dot dot dot" animation for several seconds, and it will then eventually disappear. They will never get the audio message.
"The issue was first spotted [2]on the podcast Search Engine ..." according to [3]an article in Fortune :
> Rambo's explanation of the curiosity goes like this.
>
> "When you send an audio message using the Messages app, the message includes a transcription of the audio. If you happen to pronounce the name 'Dave and Buster's' as someone would normally pronounce it, almost like it's a single word, the transcription engine on iOS will recognize the brand name and correctly write it as 'Dave & Buster's' (with an ampersand)," he begins. So far, so good." [But ampersands have special meaning in HTML/XHTML...] And, [4]as MacRumors puts it : "The parsing error triggers Apple's BlastDoor Messages feature that protects users from malicious messages that might rely on problematic parsing, so ultimately, the audio message fails to send."
To solve the mystery, Rambo "plugged the recipient device into my Mac and captured the logs right after the device received the problematic message." Their final thoughts...
> Since BlastDoor [5]was designed to thwart hacking attempts, which frequently rely on faulty data parsing, it immediately stops what it's doing and just fails. That's what causes the message to get stuck in the "dot dot dot" state, which eventually times out, and the message just disappears. On the surface, this does sound like it could be used to "hack" someone's iPhone via a bad audio message transcription, but in reality what this bug demonstrates is that Apple's BlastDoor mechanism is working as designed.
>
> Many bad parsers would probably accept the incorrectly-formatted XHTML, but that sort of leniency when parsing data formats is often what ends up causing security issues. By being pedantic about the formatting, BlastDoor is protecting the recipient from an exploit that would abuse that type of issue.
[1] https://rambo.codes/posts/2025-05-12-cracking-the-dave-and-busters-anomaly
[2] https://www.searchengine.show/the-dave-and-busters-anomaly/
[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidphelan/2025/05/14/apple-iphone-has-the-weirdest-new-bug-dont-send-these-imessages/
[4] https://www.macrumors.com/2025/05/12/apple-ampersand-messages-bug/
[5] https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/security/secd3c881cee/web
Well, that's shit coding (Score:2)
by TheMiddleRoad ( 1153113 )
Eol
Re: (Score:2)
by Uldis Segliņš ( 4468089 )
Exactly. Receiving end denies the messages with ampersand, so the XML gets discarded. That is either the developer on the sending side can't create proper XML with ampersand or the receiving sides developer is too scared and don't know how to decode it. Maybe both. Maybe they use bad XML libraries, maybe it has to be encoded in hex or ampersands XML notation has to be decoded twice as this over 15 years old Stackowerflow says [1]https://stackoverflow.com/ques... [stackoverflow.com]. Maybe XML should not be used at all due to such
[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1328538/how-do-i-escape-ampersands-in-xml-so-they-are-rendered-as-entities-in-html
Re: (Score:2)
by Valgrus Thunderaxe ( 8769977 )
Aurich Lawson told me only the government can censor.
For all the people (Score:2)
that say only the government can censor....