Tag Archive for: kill

Apple’s Pledge to Support RCS Messaging Could Finally Kill SMS

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Good news is coming to your group chat. Today, Apple said it will add support for the RCS messaging standard to the iPhone. The website 9to5Mac broke the news that Apple will release a software update some time next year that will bring support to iOS for the messaging standard, which is already widely used by Android phones.

RCS, or Rich Communications Standard, is a messaging service that’s a step up from the SMS and MMS messaging standards that smartphones have used since they first arrived. RCS can do more than SMS and MMS: It allows users to share higher-resolution photos and videos between their devices; it supports read receipts; and there’s more fun stuff, like the ability to easily drop emoji and GIFs into a conversation. It also adds extra layers of security that the older messaging standards lack.

Apple has famously shunned RCS in favor of its own iMessage platform, resulting in a layer of incompatibility that anyone with an Android phone—or any iPhone user who regularly texts people with Android phones—is painfully aware of. Videos shared between iOS and Android are crunchy and low-bandwidth, and Android users are often confounded by group chats, with missed messages, absent emoji, and other glitches.

For years, Apple has been relying on SMS and MMS to bridge the digital divide between these messaging platforms. It’s the last major holdout, as RCS is already supported by major players like Google, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. When Apple adds support for RCS, it won’t need that old bridge, and the move could signal the eventual death of SMS.

“It’s long been time for SMS to go away,” says Anshel Sag, principal analyst at the technology analyst firm Moor Insights and Strategy. “Now SMS can die, it can be sunset. So all the viruses and all the security flaws that are due to SMS can be eliminated.”

The move isn’t happening immediately; Apple told 9to5Mac that RCS support will come “in the later half of next year.” This timing suggests that support could arrive with the next version of iOS, which typically rolls out in September.

So it’s a ways out, but it’s certainly closer than Apple’s previous plan for the feature, which was apparently “never.”…

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Privacy by Design laws will kill your data pipelines

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A car is totaled when the cost to repair it exceeds its total value. By that logic, Privacy by Design legislation could soon be totaling data pipelines at some of the most powerful tech companies.

Those pipelines were developed well before the advent of more robust user privacy laws, such as the European Union’s GDPR (2018) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (2020). Their foundational architectures were therefore designed without certain privacy-preserving principals in mind, including k-anonymity and differential privacy.

But the problem extends way beyond trying to layer privacy mechanisms on top of existing algorithms. Data pipelines have become so complex and unwieldy that companies might not even know whether they are complying with regulations. As Meta engineers put it in a leaked internal document: “We do not have an adequate level of control and explainability over how our systems use data, and thus we can’t confidently make controlled policy changes or external commitments.”

(When we asked Meta for comment, a spokesperson referred us to the company’s original response to Motherboard about the leaked document, which said, in part: “The document was never intended to capture all of the processes we have in place to comply with privacy regulations around the world or to fully represent how our data practices and controls work.”)

As governments increasingly embrace Privacy by Design (PbD) legislation, tech companies face a choice: either start from scratch or try to fix data pipelines that are old, extraordinarily complex and already non-compliant. Some computer science researchers say a fresh start is the only way to go. But for tech companies, starting over would require engineers to roll out critical data infrastructure changes without disrupting day-to-day operations — a task that’s easier said than done.

‘Open borders’ won’t cut it

Motherboard published the leaked internal document, written by Meta engineers in 2021, at the end of April. In it, an engineering team recommended data architecture changes that would help Meta comply with a wave of governments embracing the “consent regime,” one of the core principles of PbD. India,…

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Woman pleads guilty to trying to hire fake ‘hitman’ to kill ex-husband

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MONROE COUNTY, MI – A Rockwood woman has pled guilty to attempting to hire a hitman through a fake website to kill her ex-husband.

Wendy Lynn Wein, 52, pled guilty to charges of solicitation of murder and using a computer to commit a crime on Nov. 12, according to Monroe County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.

The terms of Wein’s plea agreement include a cap of 108 months in prison on the minimum sentence, officials said. Wein will appear before Monroe Circuit Judge Daniel White for sentencing on Jan. 13, 2022.

In spring 2020, police were contacted by the owner of the website titled “Rent-A-Hitman,” after Wein filled out a “service request form” and asked for a consultation with a professional to help her with an “issue” regarding her ex-husband, according to Michigan State Police.

Tip from fake hit man rental website leads to arrest of woman soliciting murder of ex-husband

The domain was created as a cyber-security test site, police said, adding that the website owner was concerned Wein was serious and could be attempting to kill the man.

Despite using a pseudonym, Wein completed the request with her personal identifying information, officials said.

With assistance from two state police undercover narcotic units, MANTIS and LAWNET, an undercover officer posed as a hitman on July 17 and met with Wein in a South Rockwood parking lot, police said.

During the meeting, Wein offered the undercover officer $5,000 to kill her ex-husband and provided him with an upfront payment to cover travel expenses out of state, police said.

Soon after handing over the payment, Wein was arrested and taken to the Monroe County Jail.

More on MLive:

Man whose vehicle entered ditch struck while standing along the roadside

Lakewood Public Schools staff member accused of sexual misconduct involving 16-year-old student

Michigan State installing 300 security cameras in wake of 18-year-old’s disappearance, officials say

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Homeland Security Warns of Cyberattacks Intended to Kill People

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Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is warning that the next cyberattack could end up killing people — a dangerous and imminent shift from ransomware to “killware.”

In an interview with USA Today, Mayorkas noted that the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack in April, which shut down much of the gas supply along the East Coast, was distracting from a far more egregious hack.

“And that is an attempted hack of a water treatment facility in Florida, and the fact that that attack was not for financial gain but rather purely to do harm,” he told the newspaper.

The hack almost led to the contamination of much of the water supply in Oldsmar, Florida, with a remote hacker attempting to increase the amount of sodium hydroxide 100 fold. The chemical, more commonly known as lye, is lethal at higher undiluted concentrations.

“The attempted hack of this water treatment facility in February 2021 demonstrated the grave risks that malicious cyber activity poses to public health and safety,” Mayorkas told USA Today. “The attacks are increasing in frequency and gravity, and cybersecurity must be a priority for all of us.”

Thanks to the rise of internet-connected devices all across America, hackers have far more potential weaknesses to exploit.

Eventually, cyber attackers could end up posing a very real threat. In a July report, security firm Gartner warned that “cyber attackers will have weaponized operational technology environments to successfully harm or kill humans” by 2025.

Even more worrying than the Oldsmar incident is the potential of hackers targeting hospitals. Such an attack could lead to patients suffering grave long-term consequences to their health and even risk dying.

Worse yet, private healthcare providers are often not reporting ransomware hacks to the government, according to USA Today.

Earlier this month, a woman sued a hospital after it failed to report a ransomware attack that reportedly led to the death of her newborn child. Hackers gained control over the Springhill Medical Center in Alabama back in 2019. The hospital never acknowledged the attack, according to The Wall Street Journal.

According to Gartner’s report, it will soon make financial sense to…

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