Dear Samsung mobe owners: It may leak your private pics to randoms Samsung's Messages app bundled with the South Korean giant's latest smartphones and tablets may silently send people's private photos to random contacts, it is claimed. An unlucky bunch of Sammy phone fans – including owners of Galaxy S9, S9+ and Note 8 gadgets – have complained on Reddit and the official support forums that …
"In Australia (not a country known for being a telecomms value leader) my $10 plan includes unlimited MMS to other Australian numbers."
Lucky you. My plan includes 150 SMS messages (out) a month, 100 prime time minutes, free nights and weekends, no data, for only $30 but I had to threaten to drop the carrier to get a special plan.
Here in Deepest South Florida, just about all plans from just about all the major carriers feature unlimited texts. Data is a whole other thing. My T-Mobile plan gives me unlimited voice/texts in the US Canada, and (wall or no wall) Mexico. (T-Mob’s color is pink, not orange...) There is ‘unlimited’ data, but it slows to 3g after I use 5 GB/month. And tethering is 3G unless I pay extra, which I don’t. I haven’t had to pay for texts for the better part of a decade.
MMS are different to SMS messages. Most providers in the UK include "unlimited*" sms in their plans. But pretty much none of them include MMS messages.
*In the UK unlimited oddly doesn't mean what the fucking word means when it comes to phone and ISP providers. So there is a fair usage policy on most. I think Three's is max of 3000 SMS free on their "unlimited" plan. Why the UK government hasn't banned them from using the word unlimited when it's not is beyond me.
And apparently the bug was sending entire albums of photos, not just one or two random ones. With 64 GB phones, hooked up to 256 GB micro SD cards, that could be a very large amount of photos sent. Bill shock, and maybe something even more shocking if your phone sends GBs of your personal naughty photos to your mother or boss. Photos like this for instance ->
Must get me one of these along with Amazon Alexa! Who needs enemies when these are your friends. Can you trust Samsung anyway? Ever since their Smart TV's got caught snooping & phoning home, they've been tainted!
"But at least they can't send back via the aerial"
Wait a few decades until everything runs on dynamically reconfigurable universal silicon (as a more general version of current FPGAs) and your hacked TV will spontaneously grow a transmitter if hacked...
"But at least they can't send back via the aerial, so by keeping the pointless fsckers off your network the hack would at worst brick the thing."
Not at all.
Known exfiltration routes include varying screen output, or modulating current draw to send a signal out the power line.
Unknown routes... probably exist.
Playing with the screen could send a light signal, or properly done, a radio signal.
For a big TV and a decent receiving antenna that could have quite a large range... given that the low power record for signalling from North America to Australia was achieved decades ago with 7 milliwatts. Proper choice of covert signal frequency could guarantee over the horizon ranges.
I remember about 20 years ago, Mike Corley was spamming usenet with claims that MI5 and the BBC were spying on him via his TV set. Everyone thought he was completely crazy. Now, if someone said that, people would just nod in agreement and think it is a perfectly credible claim.
"Recent security survey suggested 90% of all smart TV's are hackable, by the aerial."
Good thing my TV has neither aerial nor cable attached. Nor any Internet connection. If it didn't come from the DVD player or my computer, it has no business on my TV.
...you've got a personal phone, and another for work. If applicable another one each for the missus for the mistress.
Had a colleague whos spouse was sleeping around with one or more of her subordinates at work. Got into the phone and started forwarding off the sexts to the contact list with snarky comments such as "you know why Jack got the promotion and you didn't?"
Note the latter COA does not work in your favor when going before the courts. Indeed, if you get the spouse fired your alimony payments go through the roof.
They would be very bored, most of them being snaps of items in shops so I can send message to partner asking if that item meets requirements and is OK price. *
* Most shopping is offline (online only for stuff cannot get locally or if local prices too extreme (happy to pay a reasonable local shop convenience / supporting workers extra charge)) , plus bonus that most spending habits are private (cash is (privacy) king - obv. using cards scuppers privacy)
This post has been deleted by its author
The person who downvoted that obviously hadn't read the Enlightened thread on TDWTF.
... who still uses MMS anyway? Forget blocking permissions, just delete the MMS settings from the APN and never risk any other app doing the same, or a plain-text SMS being misidentified and overcharged. The only justification for MMS is if you're roaming, when (bizarrely) they can be cheaper than an SMS, but data (via pretty much any messaging app of choice) is likely to be cheaper and superior image quality anyway.
About a month ago, in the middle of the night. Fortunately I silence it at night so it didn't wake me up. Unfortunately nothing that exciting, just some pics of her dad's birthday party and her dog covered in mud. Definitely not her entire photo album - she's a habitual picture taker so it would have taken hours to send them all!
When I texted her that morning and asked "why did you send me these pics" she insisted she didn't send me anything. Last week she texted me and said the same thing happened to her with another friend. I told her she might have some malware, because I couldn't see any other reason her phone would randomly text pics. I should send her a link to this Reg article...
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
