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Category: mobile phones

Invasive Israeli-founded bloatware is harvesting data from Samsung users in WANA

IronSource Expands Samsung Partnership, Launching on Samsung Mobile Devices in MENA https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20221103005106/en/iro…es-in-MENA

Across West Asia and North Africa (WANA), growing concerns about digital surveillance have placed Israeli cybersecurity firms and their software under intense scrutiny. Among the most alarming cases is AppCloud, a pre-installed application on Samsung’s A and M series smartphones.

The bloatware cannot be uninstalled easily because it runs on the device’s operating system. Uninstalling it requires root access (the highest level of control in a computer system) of the phone to remove the AppCloud package. Its privacy policy is nowhere to be found online and opting out is not always available.

But the real concern lies in who owns AppCloud. When investigating further, we discovered that AppCloud’s privacy policy can be traced back to the controversial Israeli-founded company ironSource (now owned by the American company Unity). ironSource is notorious for its questionable practices regarding user consent and data privacy.

3D worlds created from just a few phone photos

Existing 3D scene reconstructions require a cumbersome process of precisely measuring physical spaces with LiDAR or 3D scanners, or correcting thousands of photos along with camera pose information. A research team at KAIST has overcome these limitations and introduced a technology enabling the reconstruction of 3D—from tabletop objects to outdoor scenes—with just two to three ordinary photographs.

The results, posted to the arXiv preprint server, suggest a new paradigm in which spaces captured by can be immediately transformed into virtual environments.

The research team led by Professor Sung-Eui Yoon from the School of Computing developed the new technology called SHARE (Shape-Ray Estimation), which can reconstruct high-quality 3D scenes using only ordinary images, without precise camera pose information.

China Moves to Ban Samsung Phones Over Embedded Israeli Spyware

China is reportedly planning to ban Samsung, Motorola, Apple, and Google Pixel devices over security concerns tied to unremovable spyware. Samsung phones in the MENA region allegedly ship with Israeli-developed surveillance software, raising global privacy alarms.

Google backpedals on new Android developer registration rules

Google is backpedaling on its decision to introduce new identity verification rules for all developers, stating that it will also introduce accounts for limited app distribution and will allow users to install apps from unverified devs.

As announced in August, Google was planning to introduce what it called “Developer Verification” starting in 2026 to block malware spreading via sideloaded apps sourced from outside the official Google Play app store.

The new rules require that all apps must originate from developers with verified identities to be installed on certified Android devices; otherwise, their installation will be blocked.

Genetically engineered virus acts as ‘smart sponge’ to extract rare earth elements from water

Today’s high-tech electronics and green energy technologies would not function without rare earth elements (REEs). These 17 metals possess unique properties essential to creating items like the phosphors that illuminate our mobile phone displays and the powerful magnets used in electric vehicles and wind turbines. But extracting these substances from raw materials is a dirty process that relies on toxic chemicals and leaves behind polluted waste.

Now, a team of UC Berkeley-led researchers may have solved this problem—thanks to a tiny virus.

As reported in Nano Letters, the researchers genetically engineered a to act like a “smart sponge” that grabs from water, and, with a gentle change in temperature and acidity (pH), releases them for collection. Their unusual, groundbreaking approach could lead to a “clean” biological alternative to traditional extraction methods for REEs and other critical elements.

Metasurfaces show promise in boosting AR image clarity and brightness

Researchers have designed and demonstrated a new optical component that could significantly enhance the brightness and image quality of augmented reality (AR) glasses. The advance brings AR glasses a step closer to becoming as commonplace and useful as today’s smartphones.

“Many of today’s AR headsets are bulky and have a short battery life with displays that are dim and hard to see, especially outdoors,” said research team leader Nick Vamivakas from the University of Rochester. “By creating a much more efficient input port for the display, our work could help make AR glasses much brighter and more power-efficient, moving them from being a niche gadget to something as light and comfortable as a regular pair of eyeglasses.”

In an article published in the journal Optical Materials Express, the researchers describe how they replaced a single waveguide in-coupler—the input port where the image enters the glass—with one featuring three specialized zones, each made of a material, to achieve improved performance.

Physicists Discover Bizarre “Quantum Pinball” State of Matter

Physicists have discovered how to make electrons “freeze” and “melt” into bizarre quantum patterns, forming a new kind of matter where solid and liquid coexist. Electricity drives nearly every aspect of modern life, from powering vehicles and smartphones to running computers and countless other d

Magnetic materials discovered by AI could reduce rare earth dependence

Researchers at the University of New Hampshire have harnessed artificial intelligence to accelerate the discovery of new functional magnetic materials, creating a searchable database of 67,573 magnetic materials, including 25 previously unrecognized compounds that remain magnetic even at high temperatures.

“By accelerating the discovery of sustainable magnetic materials, we can reduce dependence on , lower the cost of electric vehicles and renewable-energy systems, and strengthen the U.S. manufacturing base,” said Suman Itani, lead author and a doctoral student in physics.

The newly created database, named the Northeast Materials Database, helps to more easily explore all the which play a major role in the technology that powers our world: smartphones, , power generators, electric vehicles and more. But these magnets rely on expensive, imported, and increasingly difficult to obtain rare earth elements, and no new permanent magnet has been discovered from the many magnetic compounds we know exist.

Samsung Mobile Flaw Exploited as Zero-Day to Deploy LANDFALL Android Spyware

It’s assessed that the attacks involved sending via WhatsApp malicious images in the form of DNG (Digital Negative) files, with evidence of LANDFALL samples going all the way back to July 23, 2024. This is based on DNG artifacts bearing names like “WhatsApp Image 2025/02/10 at 4.54.17 PM.jpeg” and “IMG-20240723-WA0000.jpg.”

Itay Cohen, senior principal researcher at Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, told The Hacker News that they have not observed any significant functional changes between the samples from July 2024 and February 2025, when the most recent LANDFALL artifact was uploaded to VirusTotal.

LANDFALL, once installed and executed, acts as a comprehensive spy tool, capable of harvesting sensitive data, including microphone recording, location, photos, contacts, SMS, files, and call logs.

New LandFall spyware exploited Samsung zero-day via WhatsApp messages

A threat actor exploited a zero-day vulnerability in Samsung’s Android image processing library to deploy a previously unknown spyware called ‘LandFall’ using malicious images sent over WhatsApp.

The security issue was patched this year in April, but researchers found evidence that the LandFall operation was active since at least July 2024, and targeted select Samsung Galaxy users in the Middle East.

Identified as CVE-2025–21042, the zero-day is an out-of-bounds write in libimagecodec.quram.so and has a critical severity rating. A remote attacker successfully exploiting it can execute arbitrary code on a target device.

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