Tech

• Data leak affecting everyone in the US, UK, and Canada even worse than we thought
• Microsoft’s Recall AI feature won’t be available for Windows testers until October – The Verge
• Finally! Windows will let your webcam work in multiple apps at once | PCWorld
• Nothing is requiring employees to be in the office five days a week – The Verge
• Chick-fil-A is reportedly launching a streaming service for some reason – The Verge
• Western Digital’s New 8TB PS5 SSD Is Very Expensive (Understatement) – GameSpot
• DeepMind workers urge Google to drop military contracts
• X is closing its operations in Brazil immediately, but its service will remain live for users

Gaming

• The big games, reveals, and trailers from Gamescom Opening Night Live 2024
• Xbox boss Phil Spencer addresses Indiana Jones PS5 launch news by saying Xbox “is a business” | Eurogamer.net
• Microsoft’s new Xbox Game Pass Standard tier is now available to test for $1 – The Verge
• Microsoft’s white Xbox Series X and 2TB special edition model launching in October – The Verge
• Microsoft’s new Xbox Adaptive Joystick puts accessibility at the center – The Verge
• 8BitDo Launches Official Xbox And PC Accessibility Controller With Unique Design And Friendly Price – GameSpot
• Video game actors call for better transparency around “disgusting” mocap work not disclosed in advance | Eurogamer.net
• Black Myth: Wukong Marketing Team Offers Content Creators a Steam Key — but Bans ‘Feminist Propaganda’ and All Talk of Covid – IGN

Content Creation

• Twitch is upping subscription prices on mobile – The Verge

Hardware/Software Updates

• Time to update Chrome (again) to patch another zero-day exploit | PCWorld

If there are any topics you’d like to see covered, email us at ttt@majorshouse.com or join the MajorsHouse Discord server!

You can follow us at:
@MajorLinux
@SynxiecBeta
@kevikevshow

Sub to the audio podcast here

The post Tech Talk Thursdays Episode #122 (08/22/2024) appeared first on Desk Chair Analysts.

After this past weekend’s messy security nightmare with Nothing Chats, Sunbird has taken down its own app.

The company started offering their iMessage service in late 2022 in closed beta. This would probably explain why there were so few downloads of the original app prior to the Nothing partnership. Nobody would have noticed (or probably cared) about the security holes going on behind the scenes.

All that changed when Nothing brought their name, app, and service to the spotlight. As we saw, folks took notice and started digging into it. Over 630,000 files were accessible through a discovered vulnerability. This was after Sunbird claimed no data was stored on its servers.

When investigating the issue, Sunbird was initially shutting down the meda portion of the app.

Good afternoon everyone. We are investigating the security issues raised in the last 24 hours. In an abundance of caution and to protect your confidential data, we are shutting down Sunbird media temporarily. We will keep you posted. Thank you, & sincere apologies for the inconvenience.”

Sunbird notification

It wasn’t long after that when the whole app went down.

Dear Sunbird User. We have decided to pause Sunbird usage for now while we investigate security concerns. We will update you when we are ready to proceed.”

Sunbird notification

The website, however, is still up. There are no mentions of this issue. The claims of end-to-end encryption are still there along with the claim they don’t store your data.

There have also been reports that many people had questions or raised alarms to what Sunbird was doing. Ars Technica reported that basic questions went unanswered or ignored. Also, a member of Sunbird’s Discord community claims they were banned when pointing out a security issue.

Source: 9to5Google

The post Sunbird shuts down its own app after Nothing Chats debacle appeared first on Desk Chair Analysts.

Background

After announcing and releasing it last week, it was discovered that there were some security flaws in its implementation. The issues were stemming from how it managed iMessage integration into the app.

The app was made in partnership with Sunbird who has a similar app on the Google Play Store. The apps operate by having the user sign into their Apple ID. It is then associated with a Mac Mini in a datacenter. This is what facilitates moving messages between Apple iMessages and anything outside of it.

To be clear, they are not the first company to do this. Beeper has been around for a while and does a similar process. According to Beeper’s FAQ, they are encrypting messages from your client to their server, decrypting it to get the message then sends it via iMessage (FAQ specifically says WhatsApp). In the end, the messages aren’t end-to-end encrypted (E2EE), but it looks like more than what Sunbird does.

Vulnerabilities

Texts.com had began notifying Sunbird of a vulnerability with data being sent over HTTP after being decrypted. Sunbird then responded saying that it is “only used as part of the one-off initial request from the app notifying back-end of the upcoming iMessage connection.”

This appears to fly in the face of Sunbird stating that messages were E2EE and that nobody could see messages being sent to and from Sunbird. Remember, Beeper admits that they do NOT have E2EE for iMessages.

And this is where I think the problem actually lies. It is one thing to have data just flying through plain text to get a hacky version iMessage on Android working. It’s another to state that your implementation is secure when it isn’t and then try to hand wave it away.

While I’m not one to say don’t use a service (I have used Beeper for iMessages on Windows several times), I will say to just keep an eye on what’s happening with the service. You never know what’s happening behind the scenes.

Source: The Verge

The post Nothing to see here because Chats was pulled from Play Store appeared first on Desk Chair Analysts.

Nothing, a phone brand created by Carl Pei when he left OnePlus, announced that it will be bringing “Nothing Chats” to their phones. This app is supposed to gain iMessage compatibility later in the month.

The app will be leveraging the power of Sunbird. Sunbird is an unofficial iMessage client that was created last year. It has over 10,000 downloads on the Google Play Store. With this interoperability, all a user would need to do is log in with their Apple ID. Nothing claims that there will be end-to-end encryption that will be inline with Sunbird’s privacy policy.

Car Pei created a video explaining that individual and group chats, typing indicators, and full-size media sharing will be present. Read receipts, message reactions, and replies will be added later.

This will likely be Nothing Phone (2)’s messaging application as it will support RCS as well. The app will be available to US, UK, and EU customers on November 17.

This is wild. The last time I heard of Sunbird was from Mozilla. But I might check out this Sunbird app on one of my Android phones. Also, I wonder if this would have been an issue with the Nothing Phone (2) wasn’t released in the US.

Source: MacRumors

The post Nothing has iMessage like Apple appeared first on Desk Chair Analysts.