Here's how you can prevent your iPhone or iPad from the dreaded date bricking bug until the point Apple releases an official fix for it.

A Jailbreak Tweak Will Protect You From The Dreaded Date Bricking Bug

Yesterday it came to public knowledge that there's a bug in stock iOS that bricks every 64-bit iPhone, iPad, iPod touch. Simply change the device's date to 1st January 1970, and give it a restart. The device will go into an endless boot loop and will be essentially rendered useless. In other words, the bug forces you to take your device to an Apple Store. Not something you would want to go through at anypoint in time.

Interestingly though, if you have a jailbroken device at hand, then you can actually protect yourself from the bug altogether using a jailbreak tweak that goes by the name ofBrickingDate. Once downloaded and installed, the tweak works its magic by simply disallowing users to go back all the way to 1st January 1970 in the 'Date & Time' section of iOS.

With the tweak installed, you don't just protect yourself from the bricking bug, but you can also rest assured that someone else wouldn't be able to pull off the prank on you either.

Keep in mind that the BrickingDate tweak is not available to download from one of the default repositories in Cydia, which means that you have to add a new source manually in order to download and install the tweak.

Launch Cydia and add the following repo as it is:http://repo.ziph0n.com and once you're done, simply search for BrickingDate and install it. In case you're wondering, yes, the tweak is absolutely free to download and install.

It's rather funny how the community in general dismisses jailbreaking for a lot of reasons, especially when it comes to security. But if you have a jailbroken iPhone or iPad at hand, then you're absolutely safe from this menace, all thanks to this simple tweak. Apple on the other hand is yet to address this issue and we're sure the company will go about the whole thing by pushing out a software update to its mobile operating system.

It's quite likely that iOS 9.3 will be the recipient of the fix, but given the sheer nature of this bug, we wouldn't be surprised if Apple pushes out a fix in the form of iOS 9.2.2 update in the days to come, so be on a lookout for that.