Samsung Uses UWB To Turn Galaxy Phones Into Digital Car Keys

After announcing it earlier this year, Samsung is finally adding support for using certain Galaxy flagship smartphones as digital keys to unlock your vehicles. Known as Samsung Digital Key, the new feature uses Ultra Wide Band (UWB) and NFC to enable “passive entry”, meaning that the car will unlock when you’re nearby without you needing to take out your phone, similar to Apple’s car keys introduced last year.

Samsung’s iteration will launch by the end of this year in South Korea and will initially support only one car model for now, which is the Genesis GV60. Interestingly, the car already comes with several smart features of its own, including a built-in face scanner on the side of the car known as Face Connect, and a fingerprint scanner. Both of which are used to biometrically verify the driver’s identity without requiring a physical key.

Back to Samsung’s new tech, the digital key also uses the company’s embedded Secure Element (eSE) technology to protect sensitive information, and is stored in the Samsung Pass app. The company says that using UWB as a car key prevents potential relay attacks, meaning thieves can’t start your car without having your physical phone in the vehicle. Additionally, the key can be shared with friends and family with the ability to set a time limit, and even allows each driver to preset seat and mirror positions when they get in the car.

When the feature was announced, Samsung revealed four automaker partners — Audi, BMW, Ford, and Genesis. With that in mind, we can expect the Samsung Digital Key to be compatible with the other brands some time in the future, although their expected rollout has not be revealed as of yet. The Galaxy devices that come with UWB are the Galaxy S21+, Galaxy S21 Ultra, Galaxy Z Fold2, Galaxy Z Fold3, and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra.

Ragnarok Group Releases Decryption Keys And Quietly Disappears

Ragnarok, the infamous hacker group, has seemingly and quietly gone off into the night. The ransomware group has reportedly shut up shop and, on top of that, released a master decryption key.

Evidence of the group’s disappearance was discovered by several sites, chief among them being BleepingComputer. Specifically, several elements of the site seemed to have been stripped bare of all visuals. If anything, it seems as if the group did not have any plans on shutting down this fast, indicating that something or someone may have reached key members of the group.

Unsurprisingly, any evidence of the threat actors behind the group no longer exists, save except for the aforementioned decryption key.

The good news is that the master key works and unlocks all files that were encrypted by the group’s ransomware, along with a list of its victims, several of which were also victims of its double extortion tactic; on top of encrypting files and demanding a ransom, the group would also steal data that threaten to post it on a “leak” site.

Ragnarok isn’t the first ransomware to have seemingly vanish this year. Darkside, the hacker group that claimed responsibility for both the Colonial Pipeline and Toshiba’s European business, had apologised and quit the scene after the attacks, although the sincerity of such actions is questionable and rightly so.