Researchers unmasked a prolific SMS scammer and then a new one emerged in its wake and Sam Altman addresses ‘bumpy’ GPT-5 rollout

If you, like practically anyone else with a cell phone in the U.S. and beyond, have received a scam text message about an unpaid toll or undelivered mail item, there’s a good chance you have been targeted by a prolific scamming operation. But a series of opsec mistakes ultimately led security researchers and investigative journalists to the real-world identity of the maker of the scamming software, Magic Cat, who researchers say goes by the handle Darcula.  In other news, During a Reddit ask-me-anything session on Friday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and key members of the GPT-5 team were peppered with questions about the new model and requests to bring back its previous model, GPT-4o. They also asked Altman about the most embarrassing — and perhaps funniest — snafu in the presentation, the “chart crime.”

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