In the early hours of Tuesday morning, some OnePlus 7 Pro owners may have taken a gander at their phones only to find some cryptic, indecipherable messages. A botched internal test resulted in two global push notifications, with one message reading “hahahahaha” in Chinese and the other a string of gibberish English.
Some users were understandably worried their phones had been hacked. Others assumed it was spam, and others still laughed it off. In any case, OnePlus has since clarified with a statement.
During an internal test, our OxygenOS team accidentally sent out a global push notification to some OnePlus 7 Pro owners. We would like to apologize for any difficulties, and assure you that our team is currently investigating the error. We’ll share more information soon.
— OnePlus (@oneplus) July 1, 2019
Meanwhile, another statement on the OnePlus forums gave a little more detail behind the botched messaging. “The push messages occurred while the OxygenOS team was conducting a software test for the upcoming Android Q system update. Due to an error during the testing process, we accidentally pushed a routine test message to some of our OnePlus 7 Pro OxygenOS users.”
OnePlus went on to say it wanted to “reassure that this incident does not indicate any risks for your personal data” and that it was working to making sure a similar incident never happens again.
Gizmodo tried firing up our OnePlus 7 Pro, but alas, we were not among the chosen few who received borked messages. However, there’s plenty of screenshots on Twitter from users from all over the world.
Did @oneplus just get hacked? What’s up with these push notifications? Anyone else? pic.twitter.com/0Kox7AKosd
— Nicole Scott in Berlin (@Nicole_Scooter) July 1, 2019
All things considered, this could have gone a lot worse. Researchers recently figured out a way to send fake presidential emergency alerts by exploiting a vulnerability with LTE.
A horrifying thought, especially when you consider how that bogus Hawaii missile attack alert in January 2018 scared the crap out of everyone who received them.
Another botched alert in Oregon flooded 911 dispatchers with panicked calls from residents. While the OnePlus goof was innocuous, it does highlight how human error can undermine global notification systems or worse, incite mass panic.
For now, though, we can just 哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈 at OnePlus’s hbgchjgvchjg hbgchjgvchjg cock up.