Fix Corrupt App Store Binaries That Crash On Launch

Posted by Rob LeFebvre on July 5th, 2012

Marco Arment, the developer of Instapaper, noticed a curious thing last night - Instapaper was crashing on launch after an update from the App Store.

"Last night, within minutes of Apple approving the Instapaper 4.2.3 update," he said on his blog, "I was deluged by support email and Twitter messages from customers saying that it crashed immediately on launch, even with a clean install."

Even though Apple had reviewed the update, and it must have worked for them, every clean installed copy Arment downloaded and installed exhibited this behavior. Instapaper wasn't the only app, either.

Here's what he says is typical of such behavior:

Characterizations of this issue:

The app crashes immediately on launch, every time, even after a delete and reinstall as long as the corrupt file is being served by the App Store.

It doesn’t even show the Default.png before crashing. Just a split-second of a partial fade to black, then back to Springboard.

It may only affect customers in some regions.

If updating from iTunes, some customers might get a dialog citing error 8324 or 8326.

Mac apps might show this dialog:
“[App] is damaged and can’t be opened. Delete [App] and download it again from the App Store.”
The console might show: AppleFairplayTextCrypterSession::fairplayOpen() failed, error -42110

Obviously, this is a fairly serious issue, and - according to Arment - has already been fixed by Apple. If you have similar issues with some updated apps today, Ament says, "The only fix for people with bad copies, once good copies are being served again by the App Store, is to delete and reinstall the app."

In addition, he warns app developers against releasing non-critical app updated for the next couple of days to be sure the issue is resolved.