Crash in iOS suspected related to Google Ads SDK

For the past few months, our app has experienced crash with stack trace related to URLConnectionLoader from CFNetwork framework across multiple iOS versions from iOS 15 to 18 based on reports from Crashlytics and Xcode organizer. Unfortunately we are unable to reproduce it and haven't been able to resolve it.

When looking at the crash reports, we found that when the crash happened it seems that certain Google Ads process was executed in the same time in another thread (indicated by GAD prefix) and I also found this very old thread ( https://github.com/googleads/googleads-mobile-unity/issues/793 ) which indicates that there used to be a similar problem exists in the past caused by the SDK because the crashed stack trace is very similar to ours so we kinda suspected that the crash could be caused by the SDK implementation.

From the breadcrumbs, we also found that the moment of the crash is very close to the timing where we would try to load ads from the SDK so it gave us even more confidence in the suspicion.

It seems that the crash is intermittent since the crash is memory exception issue and also the reason why we haven't been able to reproduce it so far even after following the breadcrumbs from the Crashlytics.

Hereby I attached several of the crash reports which inside one of the threads referencing to GAD prefix code which we assumed is coming from the SDK. 

We hope you can help us investigate this issue and  hopefully assist us in solving it. Thank you.

Hi ,

Thank you for contacting the Mobile Ads SDK Support team.

I have executed our Sample project on iPhone 12(16.0) and iPhone 11(15.4) and iPhone 16(18.3,18.4) as well. U nfortunately we are unable to replicate the crash from our end. Could you confirm whether the mentioned issue is reproducible in our sample project? and please share the following details v ia reply to author option? for further investigation.

• Sample project reproducing the issue 
• SDK version which your using
• Steps to replicate the issue

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Hi, 

Thank you for getting back to us.

It is always recommended to use the latest version of the SDKs. As of today, the latest version of the SDK is 12.8.0. 

I'm afraid that we'll need detailed debug information from a device where it's observed in order to actually make any progress in diagnosing this. The only way for us to investigate further is by creating a project where the issue is reproducible. Kindly provide the below information privately for further investigation: 

• Affected devices

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Dear AdMob Support Team,

Thank you for your response. However, I believe there has been a misunderstanding regarding the issue I raised.

My concern is not related to a crash or SDK integration issue. Instead, my app— Study Assistant—which I uploaded to the Amazon Appstoreand submitted to AdMob for review on July 25th, is still stuck at the “Getting ready”status as of today, July 28th.

I would greatly appreciate it if you could kindly check on the review status of my app and let me know if there is any further information or action required from my end to move it forward.

Please let me know how I can assist in resolving this.

Thank you again for your support.

Best regards,
Sarah Atieno
AdMob Publisher ID: pub-4144108070376394

Thanks for the response.

Hmm I understand, it is indeed hard when we cannot reproduce the issue. I guess for now, we'll try to find how to reproduce the issue in our side first so we can get more information on this. 

When we are able to reproduce it especially using the sample project you gave above, we'll get back to you with the findings. Hopefully we can reproduce it soon

Hi,

I've raised this concern to the wider team and will get back to you once I receive any updates on it. Meanwhile, your patience is highly appreciated.

Hi,

Based on the crash logs provided, the GADStaticGesturesSignalSource crash appears to be a memory access issue related to network operations and ad-related gesture signal processing.

It seems that the app's ad gesture processing code (GADStaticGesturesSignalSource) is interacting with a network request, but the underlying network object or a related timer has been deallocated or become invalid by the time a subsequent action is attempted. When the dispatch timer attempts to operate on this invalid memory address ( 0x0000000000000058 , see "1st crash"), it causes a crash.

The fact that the issue is tied to GADStaticGesturesSignalSource and a network-related crash suggests that there could be an issue in how the Google Mobile Ads SDK (version 12.6.0) or its dependencies handle background network operations and threads, particularly when a user is interacting with an ad. The crash is not in the app's code but rather in a system library ( libdispatch.dylib ), which is often a symptom of an underlying memory management error from the library that called it.

To help us investigate further, could you please share the following details v ia reply to author option? :

• Sample Project which replicates the crash
• Steps to reproduce the issue

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