Signal shoots down zero-day rumors, finds 'no evidence' of device takeover

Signal has denied a "vague viral reports" of a zero-day vulnerability in its Generate Links Previews that could allow device takeover. In a late Sunday night post on the site formerly known as Twitter, Signal said it conducted a "responsible investigation" and found "no evidence that suggests this vulnerability is real nor has …

[I am David Jones]

“turn off features that you aren't using”?

Life’s too short to go through all my apps and other software and turn off features that I don’t need. Or think I don’t need.

And, of course, to then go through and fix what I did because I didn’t fully understand the implications of all those changes…

[Dan 55]

Re: “turn off features that you aren't using”?

I'd think turning off link previews in messaging apps is one of the first things any self-respecting commentard would do to, firstly to stop malware from dodgy spam messages being downloaded, secondly to stop your phone number being confirmed, and thirdly to stop being geolocated from your IP address.

[Martin an gof]

Re: “turn off features that you aren't using”?

Not at all familiar with messaging apps other than Signal, but at least two of those three reasons don't apply to Signal. My main reason for turning off link previews is because it uses additional data, but even that's becoming less of an issue these days.

Personally, on Signal, we leave link previews on but we have various settings for media - videos don't download by default when on mobile data, for example.

[gnasher729]

Re: “turn off features that you aren't using”?

You could get an iPhone. Switch it to report a fake IP address and fake email address, and a deliberately inaccurate location, and switch on “lockdown” to remove lots of features that are in any way dangerous.

[Dan 55]

Re: “turn off features that you aren't using”?

You could get an iPhone.

I could but I have more sense than money...

The fake IP address is really proxying stuff through Apple. I'd rather not.

Also none of what you said helps if your SMS client or other chat app downloads links given in SMS messages just to render a title and a postage-sized stamp web page.

Apart from possibly "lockdown" mode (I don't know) but that sounds like "Oh crap, we've just realised that a whole bunch of stuff we've done for ages is wrong, how do we get rid of it? I know, put it all under one toggle setting and let the user decide. That way it's not our fault any more."

[ntt]

Re: “turn off features that you aren't using”?

That's exactly what the likes of Meta loves, and it's no coincidence that their apps options are so difficult to understand and intertwined to each other