encrypted messaging and phone calls Cyber-attack

The key advice is simple. Don’t use basic network text messaging—including RCS, where those texts are not fully encrypted. This rules out Apple’s new RCS option for messaging Androids, albeit when messaging within iMessage (to other Apple users) or within Google Messages (to other Android users) is secure.

You should change these two settings—calls and messages—as soon as iOS 18.2 is released and working as billed. My suggestion is to use WhatsApp for messaging and calling, albeit Signal or any other fully encrypted app will do the job. Those are two separate settings—one for messages and one for calls. You need to change both. The Default Apps menu option will be available in Settings after updating to iOS 18.2.

Most cellular calls are not fully encrypted and are at risk of interception whether lawful or otherwise. It’s network dependent. Using a platform like WhatsApp or Signal, or FaceTime on iPhones, resolves this. 

"Timing is everything. Just as Apple’s adoption of RCS had seemed to signal a return to text messaging versus the unstoppable growth of WhatsApp, then along comes a surprising new hurdle to stop that in its tracks. While messaging Android to Android or iPhone to iPhone is secure, messaging from one to the other is not.

Now even the FBI and CISA, the US cyber defense agency, are warning Americans to use responsibly encrypted messaging and phone calls where they can. The backdrop is the Chinese hacking of US networks that is reportedly “ongoing and likely larger in scale than previously understood.” Fully encrypted comms is the best defense against this compromise, and Americans are being urged to use that wherever possible.

This would have contained call and text contents.”

The scale of the hacking campaign and the implications for US critical infrastructure and the security of its networks has created an unsurprising political storm. As reported by Reuters, “

ForbesFBI Hacking Warning—Change 2 Settings On Your iPhoneBy Zak Doffman