Beginning about one day ago, my wife suddenly started receiving text-messages which said that I had "hearted" things which I had sent to her about one day before.

Of course, "I would never do such a thing – why should I?" And, I never received a copy of what, purportedly, "I" had sent. (Likewise the other way around: it "suddenly started happening" both ways.)

Therefore, please be advised. "[Verizon ...] text messaging has [just now(?)] been hacked."

What makes you think that Verizon's SMS was 'hacked', as opposed to it being a spoofing attack?

Someone had access to the exact content of "private" text messages that we had sent to one another. And was able to interject "hearts," but to send them only to "the opposite party." This happened in both directions.

Also: "it happened about one day later." So, there was a crontab somewhere.

I don't see how this indicates that Verizon's systems have been hacked. SMS interception is only a little more difficult than SMS spoofing.

Of course, there may be non-criminal explanations too. It might be a stretch to argue that you accidentally 'liked' the text message as you also received one from your wife. But there may have been some software update to your phones that introduced a bug or similar that resulted in the SMS apps on your phones sending the messages.

If a hacker gained access to Verizon's central SMS, you have to wonder why he would generate these messages unless his goal was to troll the company's customers and thus embarrass the company. In which case, why have you and your wife been sent these messages, but not millions of other Verizon customers?

RCS is supposed to be secure.

That was one of the reasons to move to it.

I get texts from China about where to send my USPS package.

We don't know how widespread the problem might be, and I do not expect the company to say. But, this is not the first time that I have also heard others say that they received fake "hearts" and even what they suspected to be fake responses in their text-message threads. Every system has vulnerabilities.