An error in a Google service caused thousands of applications on iPhone devices to crash. Although the problem affected Apple devices, the source of the failure was Google Analytics for Firebase, a tool used by developers, and not the iOS operating system.
Developers discussed the issue on GitHub this Tuesday, September 29th. It was found that the Google service was sending data with incorrect formatting to the applications, and when attempting to process this information during startup, some programs were terminated in less than a second.
A Google collaborator commented on the matter and assured that the company had already implemented a fix. He clarified that developers do not need to update Firebase or release new versions of their applications to resolve the problem.
Google Analytics for Firebase functions to gather usage and interaction metrics within applications. The first entry made in the official repository detailed a sudden increase in the volume of crashes. In a span of just 18 minutes, one developer documented 56 failures involving 56 users.
Subsequent investigation indicated that the crashes occurred immediately after the SDK received a response from Google's servers. The application attempted to process the received data but encountered invalid information, resulting in its termination.
Later, Google confirmed that the cause was the poorly formatted data package. According to Android Authority, thousands of applications depending on Firebase were impacted. In some situations, developers reported crash rates exceeding five thousand times the usual rate.
The failure was reported around 9:41 PM (Brasília time) on Monday, September 28th. The company announced that it finalized the distribution of the fix at 11:52 PM the same day. Since the solution was applied on the server side, developers did not need to publish new app versions.
Google warned that cached data could persist, causing crashes for up to four hours after the fix was applied. These remaining cases should be eliminated around 3:52 AM the next day, when the old data would be replaced.