Samsung delays Galaxy Fold while WannaCry cyber expert guilty of bank malware

samsung delays galaxy fold while cyber expert guilty of malware 2019 images

Samsung‘s revolutionary Galaxy Fold, which was to be the tech industry’s first mainstream folding-screen device was supposed to hit shelved on Friday, but those plans were quickly scrapped after problems hit. Reviewers (including Movie TV Tech Geeks) found the smartphone ‘phablets’ were breaking after just two days of use and malfunctioning.

Working hard to avoid the 2016 Note 7 debacle, the company is putting a halt to any more Galaxy Folds hitting the marketplace and will announce a new release date sometime in the coming weeks. We know that this means either months or indefinitely while Huawei continues pushing forward with their folding device.

Samsung is pushing back this week’s planned public launch of its highly anticipated, $2000 folding phone after reports that reviewers’ phones were breaking.

The company had been planning to release the Galaxy Fold on Friday, but instead it will now run more tests and announce a new launch date in the “coming weeks.”

The delay is a setback for Samsung and for the smartphone market generally, which had been pinning some hopes on the folding phone to catalyze innovation in the industry. The Galaxy Fold, with its $1,980 price tag, was not intended to be a mass market hit, but many hoped it would hint at a new wave of smartphone advances — an area that has been lagging in recent years.

But device reviewers quickly found issue with the Galaxy Fold, which is about the size of an average smartphone when folded, and the size of a small tablet when its two sides are pulled apart.

Several journalists reported the inside screens flickering, freezing and finally dying on their test units within the first couple days. Two reviewers mistakenly removed an outer plastic layer that was meant to stay on and reported scratches on the screen afterward.

Samsung confirmed last week that the layer was meant to stay on. But that didn’t explain why many reviewers saw the phone’s inside screens break.

An early inspection showed there could be issues when pressure is put on the exposed areas of the hinges that open and close the phone, Samsung said in a statement announcing the launch delay Monday. It also found an issue where “substances found inside the device affected the display performance.”

Samsung said it will to find ways to better protect the screens and explain to people that the outside protective layer must stay on.

Other test phones seemed to still be working well, and so far holding up to the Samsung pledge that the phone can be unfolded about 200,000 times in its life.

marcus hutchins stopped wannacry virus but created bank malware
Marcus Hutchins

British Cyber Expert That Stopped A Worldwide Virus Guilty Of Making Malware

It’s like a scene out of a tech movie where the hero who stops a massive attack on the country is also the villain who plans on ripping off the entire banking system. This is the story of Marcus Hutchins who was called a hero for stopped the WannaCry virus in 2017.

A British cybersecurity researcher credited with stopping a worldwide computer virus has pleaded guilty to developing malware to steal banking information.

Federal prosecutors in Wisconsin and Marcus Hutchins’ attorneys said in a joint court filing Friday that the 24-year-old agreed to plead guilty to developing malware called Kronos and conspiring to distribute it from 2012 to 2015. In exchange for his plea to those charges, prosecutors dismissed eight more.

“As you may be aware, I’ve pleaded guilty to two charges related to writing malware in the years prior to my career in security,” Hutchins said in a statement on his website . “I regret these actions and accept full responsibility for my mistakes. Having grown up, I’ve since been using the same skills that I misused several years ago for constructive purposes. I will continue to devote my time to keeping people safe from malware attacks.”

Hutchins faces up 10 years in prison but could receive a more lenient sentence for accepting responsibility, the court filing said. Attorneys said Hutchins understands he could be deported.

Sentencing has not been scheduled.

Hutchins’ arrest in Las Vegas in August 2017, as he was about to board a flight to England, came as a shock; just months earlier he was hailed a hero for finding a “kill switch” to the WannaCry virus that crippled computers worldwide. At the time, he told media outlets in interviews that he didn’t consider himself a hero but that he was combating malware because “it’s the right thing to do.”

Prosecutors said Hutchins made incriminating statements during a two-hour interrogation, and later during a jailhouse phone call that Hutchins was told was being recorded, he told an unidentified person that he “used to write malware” years before.

“I knew it was always going to come back,” Hutchins said on the call, but that he didn’t “think it would be so soon.”

Prosecutors said in court filings that Hutchins sold the Kronos software to someone in Wisconsin and that he “personally delivered” the software to someone in California. The malware was designed “to intercept communications and collect personal information, including usernames, passwords, email addresses, and financial data” from computers, prosecutors said.

Kronos was “used to infect numerous computers around the world and steal banking information,” prosecutors said, without providing an exact number. It’s unclear how much Hutchins’ profited from creating the malware, but in online chats the FBI intercepted on November 2014, Hutchins’ lamented he had only made $8,000 from five sales. Hutchins said he thought he would be making around $100,000 annually by selling Kronos with one of his conspirators, who is not named in the indictment.

Hutchins initially pleaded not guilty to all the charges and was scheduled to go on trial in July. While his case has been pending, prosecutors barred Hutchins from returning home. He has been living in California, working as a cybersecurity consultant.