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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 16 Issue 11
Volume 16, Issue 11 Atari Online News, Etc. March 14, 2014
Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2014
All Rights Reserved
Atari Online News, Etc.
A-ONE Online Magazine
Dana P. Jacobson, Publisher/Managing Editor
Joseph Mirando, Managing Editor
Rob Mahlert, Associate Editor
Atari Online News, Etc. Staff
Dana P. Jacobson -- Editor
Joe Mirando -- "People Are Talking"
Michael Burkley -- "Unabashed Atariophile"
Albert Dayes -- "CC: Classic Chips"
Rob Mahlert -- Web site
Thomas J. Andrews -- "Keeper of the Flame"
With Contributions by:
Fred Horvat
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=~=~=~=
A-ONE #1611 03/14/14
~ Pay XP Users To Switch ~ People Are Talking! ~ Mt. Gox Death Spiral!
~ NSA Posed as Facebook! ~ Twitter Service Outage! ~ New Asus Chromebox!
~ How To Avoid Phishing! ~ Wordpress Sites Used! ~ WhatsMyBrowser.org!
~ Facebook HQ Evacuated! ~ Berners-Lee View on Web ~ PS4 Sales Tops Xbox!
-* Target Admits Missing Signs! *-
-* Digging for Atari's Corporate Shame *-
-* NSA "Hijacked" Criminal Botnets for Spyware *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
This winter weather just won't quit! Sure, we're supposed to hit 50
degrees this weekend, but it will be short-lived and return to frigid
temperatures in a matter of a day or two. Personally, I've had enough!
Lots of great news and articles for you this week. In fact, we even
have some retro-Atari tidbits for you - bringing back some great
memories, I'm sure!
So, let's get right to this week's issue in order for you to read
everything!
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - Mozilla, Epic Games Fast-tracking Web-based Gaming
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Next Angry Birds A Turn-based RPG!
Digging for Atari's 'Corporate Shame'!
And much more!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Mozilla & Epic Games Are Fast-tracking Web-based Gaming
Web-based video games have been second-class citizens pretty much since
their inception. And if one institution has a shot at changing that, its
Mozilla.
Mozilla is announcing today that it has partnered up once again with Epic
Games, the makers of the most-used middleware in gaming. The two companies
are bringing the Unreal Engine 4 framework to the web just in time for the
Game Developers Conference next week in San Francisco.
Last year, Mozilla and Epic ported Unreal Engine 3 to the web, but the
companies only demonstrated it at the conference as a proof-of-concept.
This year, the technology is actually ready and available for developers
to start building on.
Why is this important? A recent survey showed that 52 percent of Americans
play browser-based games.
Much of the technology industry has been shifting to the web from desktop
or native mobile software. Naturally, theres also been a high demand for
more portable gaming technology, namely technology that makes games
accessible through the browser. We say its more portable because it
works across all platforms, enabling you to take your gameplay from
device to device, regardless of what that device is.
And these games are getting bigger in both size and scope. Our GamesBeat
channel recently gave a web game, the role-playing/collectible card game
Card Hunter, a high score.
During a call with VentureBeat, Mozilla engineering director and inventor
of WebGL, Vlad Vukicevic, shared that the company has been working on
making the Web ready for the next generation of games, especially
ensuring that the experience in the browser rivals or at least matches
that of native games.
Mozilla has been developing asm.js, a low-level subset of JavaScript with
a special focus on speed and performance. As we previously reported,
asm.js brought web-based performance a great deal closer to native
software performance key attributes in making web gaming as close to
the native experience as possible.
Vukicevic and Martin Best, Mozillas game platform strategist, were happy
to announce that the team has now gotten asm.jss speed down to 1.5 times
that of native applications. It was twice as slow a year ago and five to
10 times slower when web-based gaming started to take off.
And although Mozillas Firefox browser is currently most optimized for
asmj.js, Chrome and Opera have been coming quite close to its levels
recently.
Best also pointed out the implication this has for the gaming business. In
the past, browser-based gaming required that users download plug-ins for
high-end, 3D experiences, causing a high amount of friction and the loss
of players who were not comfortable downloading them.
Removing this step greatly improves player draw and retention.
Increasing mobility making code that can run on any machine or operating
system is also a huge advantage of putting games in the browser, Best
added.
Monster Madness, the first commercial Unreal Engine 3 game published on
the Web, saw immediate success when its maker, NomNom Games, released it.
Jeremy Stieglitz, NomNom Games chief technology officer, shared with
VentureBeat that since its release, half of the games players have come
from the Web.
Additionally, only about half of the web players have since switched to
the native version, showing that the web release is both effective as a
marketing tool
but also a final destination for [more casual] users.
Since the first web release of Monster Madness was a direct copy of the
native version of the game, NomNom Games is now releasing an even newer
version, this time explicitly designed for the browser. The game will be
live through the end of GDC and then will be periodically updated until a
permanent version is released in May 2014.
As Mozilla heads into one of the biggest gaming conferences next week, it
looks forward to showing off this years proof-of-concept web gaming on
mobile and plans to make it ship-worthy in the coming year.
Epic Games Unreal Engine powers some of the biggest franchises in the
video games industry, including first-person shooter BioShock Infinite in
the living room and action-role-playing game Infinity Blade on mobile.
Next Angry Birds A Turn-based RPG
If you wanted more bird-flinging, it looks like you might be in for a
wait: the next title from Rovio to bear the Angry Birds brand is set to
be a turn-based RPG, the company has revealed.
Our heroes are, of course, the birds, with each different bird a different
character class; the red bird, for example, is the knight, and the yellow
bird is the wizard. You'll lead them into battle across a fantasy-themed
Piggy Island, defeating the pigs, apparently, on their home turf
presumably the story will reveal the whys and wherefores.
It also seems that crafting will feature quite heavily. You'll be able to
build your own weapons; according to Angry Birds Nest, these can be items
such as a wooden sword, frying pan or "stick thingy with a sponge on
top". All characters, gear and potions will be upgradeable, too.
The game is due to soft-launch either today or tomorrow in Australia and
Canada, arriving shortly after for the rest of the world, and for Android
later this year. This soift launch has roughly similar timing to the
Australia/Canada soft launch of Rovio's "Angry Birds for girls", Angry
Birds Stella, about which few details are known other than its ridiculous
gender specificity.
Valve Shows Off Latest Steam Controller Ahead of GDC
After showing off a rough design update to its Steam Controller at its
annual Steam Dev Days conference back in January, Valve has decided,
definitively it would appear, to strip the touch screen from the handheld
and replace it with a logo-emblazoned home button alongside start and
select buttons. And new to the latest prototype design is a protruding
d-pad and X, Y, A, and B button layout similar to that of an Xbox
controller.
The company showcased the changes on its blog Friday ahead of the Game
Developers Conference in San Francisco next week, where Valve will be
showing off 10 hand-built iterations of the updated prototype for play
testing.
Valve will be prepping 10 hand-built versions of its Steam Controller to
bring to the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco next week.
(Credit: Valve)
The original Steam Controller concept contained a square touch screen with
buttons surrounding the edges, while the prototype shown off last year
relied on a four-pad touch interface in lieu of installing full-blown LCD
screens. But Valve apparently took to heart user feedback and made some
tough choices in simplifying the device to make it more in line with
modern console controller design.
While looking considerably more polished than past prototypes, the Steam
Controller is no longer such a far cry from fellow console game pads
without its touch screen and with the addition of a d-pad and traditional
button scheme. The insistence on a trackpad-like interface instead of
thumbsticks however would still be the most radical aspect of it, and
those don't look like they're going away anytime soon.
That said, Valve does not sound like it's finalized its design, and will
be using GDC as an opportunity to continue cooking up some more tweaks.
PS4 Sales Tops Xbox One in February, But Not By Much
Sony's PS4 was the best-selling game console in the U.S. last month, but
Microsoft's Xbox One earned more money.
71shares
In the war of the next-gen video game systems, Microsoft's Xbox One is
still trailing Sony's PlayStation 4, but the gap is narrowing, according
to new data from The NPD Group.
The research firm on Friday reported that the PS4 $399.99 at Amazon was
the best-selling game console in the U.S. last month, narrowly beating
out the Xbox One $499.00 at Amazon. Microsoft's new console sold "over
90 percent of what the PS4 sold in terms of unit sales," but thanks to
its higher price point, Redmond actually made more money, beating out
Sony's system on a dollar basis, NPD analyst Liam Callahan said in a
statement.
In January, PS4 sales were nearly double that of Xbox One.
In a blog post, Microsoft said it sold 258,000 Xbox One units in
February, surpassing its 114,000 Xbox 360 unit sales by more than 61
percent. The new sales figures follow this week's highly anticipated
launch of Titanfall.
"Since it launched on Tuesday, the Xbox community has been out in force
playing 'Titanfall' on Xbox Live," Microsoft said. Xbox 360 gamers will
have the chance to play Titanfall when it launches on the
seventh-generation console March 25.
Meanwhile, total U.S. video game hardware sales saw a 42 percent lift
last month, reaching $347 million, due to a more than 60 percent increase
in console purchases, NPD said. "Within console hardware, we continue to
see strong year-over-year increases due to the success of the Xbox One
and PS4," Callahan said.
Overall sales of new hardware, software, and accessories totaled $887
million in February, up 9 percent from the same time last year. NPD
estimated that used and rental sales totaled $131 million while digital
format sales brought in $512 million, bringing total U.S. video game
sales to around $1.47 billion in February.
On the software side, Call of Duty: Ghosts was the top-selling game last
month, followed by The LEGO Movie Videogame, NBA 2K14, Thief, and Grand
Theft Auto V. Rounding out the top 10 were: Battlefield 4, Assassin's
Creed IV: Black Flag, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, Minecraft,
and Bravely Default.
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE Gaming Online - Online Users Growl & Purr!
"""""""""""""""""""
The Insanity of Making Six Retro Games in Six Months
...Or trying to, anyway
Rusty Moyher spent so much of last year building retro games he "blew out"
his hands. As part of the Retro Game Crunch challenge, Moyher joined up
with fellow developers Shaun Inman and Matt Grimm to develop six
8-bit-style games over the course of six months, based on ideas from
Kickstarter backers. It was an ambitious project with tight restrictions
and a tough schedule, which led to some overexertion. "We didn't really
limit the amount of hours we were putting into it," says Moyher, who
developed repetitive strain injury issues while working on the half-dozen
new games. After a few delays, the trio managed to complete the games at
the end of last year, and this week the collection is available as a
bundle to anyone who missed out on the crowdfunding campaign.
This is what crowd participation looks like for video game development.
On paper, the self-imposed challenge was simple: each month backers would
submit a theme, and then vote on which one would actually be turned into
a game. The developers would then spend three days building a prototype
based on that idea. Backers would check out the prototype, offer some
feedback, and the team would spend the rest of the month fleshing out
the idea into a fully fledged game. The plan was to do this each month
for six straight months. "We were a bit bold," admits Moyher.
The resulting games are as diverse as you'd expect from a collection
culled from crowdsourced ideas. When the trio was given the theme "music
influences the level," they built a rhythm action game called Wub-Wub
Wescue, where you play as a pug rescuing an explorer. It's a platform
game, except the obstacles move according to the music and you can
collect records to slow down the tempo and make things a bit easier.
The very first theme challenge was "immortal, learn to die." The result
was a puzzle game in which a robot has to find ways to kill himself
while avoiding the repair bots that want to fix him back up. It's
deceptively challenging and very fun.
The games also vary quite a bit when it comes to scale and quality.
Paradox Lost is perhaps the most impressive game, a sprawling
side-scrolling adventure in the vein of classics like Metroid or
Castlevania. The theme was "can't stop time traveling," and the game
gives you a gun that lets you travel between three different time
periods by shooting special crystals. It really feels like a long-lost
NES game, and it's surprisingly expansive for an experience built in a
month.
One of the struggles the team had was getting everything they wanted into
each game before their self-imposed deadlines. For a game like Paradox
Lost, which is brimming with inventive ideas, leaving it behind to
immediately switch to something new was difficult. "I could always
spend more time on something," says Moyher, "but whether I should is
another question."
A desire to make things as good as possible wasn't what caused the
delays, however. The team didn't run into many technical issues along
the way in fact, from a coding perspective, things got a bit easier as
time passed and the Kickstarter backers provided lots of good themes
that resulted in clear game ideas. Instead, the delays were caused by
unforeseen circumstances: in addition to Moyher's RSI issues, which
forced him to see a physiotherapist, one of the team members also had to
leave to help take care of a sick relative. The six games were initially
going to be completed by last June, but these issues delayed the final
release until the end of the year.
For backers, Retro Game Crunch provided a unique experience, letting them
not only have an intimate view into how these games get made, but also a
say in what the games would look like. For those who pick up the newly
launched bundle, that experience is missing they get a collection of
six retro-style games, but without all of the added context of the
crowdfunding campaign. What was a yearlong journey for backers becomes
something else for new buyers. "It's a totally different product," says
Moyher.
Now that the games are available to a wider audience, Moyher is looking
forward to finally getting a chance to work on something else, after
dedicating the last year to retro gaming. Currently there are no plans
to do anything else with any of the game concepts, such as flesh them
out into larger experiences or port them to new platforms (each game is
available for Mac and Windows). And though they're proud of the work
that came out of it, it's also unlikely the team will be doing a
similar project anytime soon. "It was just super intense and super hard,
and that was mainly due to the schedule," says Moyher. "The rules that
we set out for ourselves were less flexible than they should've been.
"I don't think there will be a season two."
Digging for Atari's 'Corporate Shame,' The Buried E.T. Games
E.T. wants to go home. But first there will have to be a massive
excavation of a city's garbage dump.
As is part of video-game industry lore, in 1983 Atari ran screaming from
its ill-advised E.T. game and hastily and quietly buried millions of
cartridges. Somewhere. No one was quite sure where.
It turns out the where was Alamgordo, N.M., and almost certainly deep in
the giant city garbage dump. Last year, a team of filmmakers announced
they're working on a documentary about the infamous E.T. game disaster -
which cost Atari $500 million and drove it into financial ruin. And at
South by Southwest this week, they talked at length about the project
and their plans to excavate the games and make their movie.
The filmmakers behind the movie about the excavation of the infamous
E.T. game cartridges make a point about why they were buried.
The history of Atari's disaster is pretty well known. In 1983, on the
heels of the unbelievable success of Steven Spielberg's "E.T.," the
suits at Atari ordered a game version. Pronto. They wanted it to hit
shelves in six weeks. In an industry where quality mainstream games
usually took months, this was a tall order. The result? An effort
generally thought to be one of the worst games in history - shallow,
ugly, boring. It sold 1.5 million units immediately because of the
movie's success, but then sales ground to a full-stop halt.
Flash forward 30 years and the folks at Lightbox and Fuel Entertainment
got together to make a movie about this legend. They got Microsoft on
board to distribute it as part of its Xbox film series, and they were off
for New Mexico.
At SXSW, Johnathan Chinn, co-president and producer at Lightbox, and
Mike Burns, CEO of Fuel Entertainment, explained where they're at with
things. For one, they're almost certain the games are buried in the city
dump in Alamogordo. But even if that turns out to be true, it's a massive
facility, and it will not be a simple matter of digging one hole and
declaring victory. The dig could take time, they said, and they'll want
help. They hope that people will show up to assist and, perhaps, cheer
them on.
Most likely, they'll start the excavation - with the permission of the
dump, of course - sometime this spring. Perhaps as early as April.
Assuming they find the cartridges in short order, the dig could be over
quickly. But it could also drag on. Regardless, the movie itself is
about much more than just the creation of the video game and its
subsequent tarnished history. Instead, the filmmakers said, they
realized there was an opportunity to wrap that story around a larger
tale of Atari's rise and fall. From being a company founded by the
larger-than-life Nolan Bushnell, which hired the young Steve Jobs and
Steve Wozniak, to one whose name and intellectual property has been sold
and bought and dispensed with and rescued time and time again.
At the heart of that roller-coaster ride, though, is the misguided
attempt to cash in on Spielberg's theatrical triumph. "My sense is that
this is a story of corporate shame," Chinn said. "They just wanted it to
go away, but here we are making a film about it. The moral of the story
is: Don't just bury your mistakes."
While there will be a lot about Atari in the film, the real drawing card
will be the hunt for the buried games. A good bit of that could be the
film production team's many trips to and time spent in and around
Alamogordo. "I did speak to a bunch of witnesses in Alamogordo, who were
kids in 1983," Chinn recalled, "who claimed that they snuck into the
landfill and stole cartridges that were totally playable. Other people,
including people at Atari, claimed that there wasn't anything
interesting there."
100,000 Minutes of Kaboom!
(Courtesy of AtariAge)
Frequent visitors to AtariAge may know about our weekly gameplay tracker,
started by AtariAge member cvga in 2008 and continued by thegoldenband
since 2010. Participants in the tracker simply log the amount of time
they spend playing games on pre-modern platforms (i.e. anything up to
the Dreamcast), and the numbers are then totaled each week to see which
games and consoles have gotten the most time.
One of our members, Atarian7, has been on a quest to reach the maximum
possible score of 999,999 points in the game Kaboom!. He's come very
close in the past, logging a score of 928,982 in April 2012, and his
prowess has even earned praise from Larry Kaplan, the game's designer.
As of this week, he reached a tremendous milestone, and has now logged
over 100,000 minutes of Kaboom since the tracker was founded. That's more
than two months of continuous play! Will Atarian7 reach 999,999 points
before he reaches 999,999 minutes?
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
Target Admits That It Missed Warning Signs Before Data Breach
Target has admitted that it missed warnings that it was about to be the
victim of one of the largest breaches of security in U.S. history. The
retail chain came clean after a damning Bloomberg News report claimed
that a computer security firms trap had picked up a hacker trying to
access customer information.
The Bloomberg report claimed that Target had installed a $1.6 million
malware detection tool created by FireEye and that it also had a team in
Bangalore keeping a round-the-clock eye on data to make sure there was
nothing suspicious. One of the traps set by the FireEye program was stung
by a hacker on Nov. 30 and the Bangalore team did tell the company.
However, nothing was done.
Now, a day after the Bloomberg report went live, Target has had to
acknowledge that it made a mistake. With the benefit of hindsight, we
are investigating whether, if different judgments had been made the
outcome may have been different, a spokeswoman said in a statement,
notes PCMag.
Target did admit on Dec. 19 that it was a victim of a security breach,
which affected 40 million credit cards and over 70 million customers.
Just last month, its fourth quarterly earnings report showed that profits
dropped 46 percent over the same time period in 2012. The blow was even
harder to take, as it happened during the busy holiday shopping season.
FireEye also issued a statement in response to Bloombergs claims, saying
that it could not publicly confirm who its customers are.
In Targets statement today, the company admitted that it did receive
notice of criminal activity.
That activity was evaluated and acted upon. Based on their
interpretation and evaluation of that activity, the team determined that
it did not warrant immediate follow up, Target stated. Our
investigation is ongoing and we are committed to making further
investments in our people, processes and technology with the goal of
reinforcing security for our guests.
NSA "Hijacked" Criminal Botnets To Install Spyware
While U.S. law enforcement agencies have long tried to stamp out networks
of compromised computers used by cyber criminals, the National Security
Agency has been hijacking the so-called botnets as a resource for spying.
The NSA has "co-opted" more than 140,000 computers since August 2007 for
the purpose of injecting them with spying software, according to a slide
leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and published by The
Intercept news website on Wednesday.
Botnets are typically used by criminals to steal financial information
from infected machines, to relay spam messages, and to conduct
"denial-of-service" attacks against websites by having all the computers
try to connect simultaneously, thereby overwhelming them.
In November, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey told
the Senate that botnets had "emerged as a global cyber security threat"
and that the agency had developed a "comprehensive public-private
approach to eliminate the most significant botnet activity and increase
the practical consequences for those who use botnets for intellectual
property theft or other criminal activities."
According to the NSA slide published by The Intercept, one technique the
intelligence agency used was called QUANTUMBOT, which "finds computers
belonging to botnets, and hijacks the command and control channel." The
program was described as "highly successful."
Reuters reported in May that U.S. agencies had tapped botnets to harvest
data from the machines' owners or to maintain the ability to issue the
infected computers new commands.
The slide leaked by Snowden is the first confirmation of the practice,
and underscores the complications for the NSA of balancing its major
mission of providing eavesdropping capability with the less well-funded
missions of protecting critical national assets and assisting law
enforcement.
The Top Secret slide was marked for distribution to the "Five Eyes"
intelligence alliance, which includes the United States and Britain.
The NSA declined to confirm or deny the existence of the program. It is
not known if the botnets hijacked by the agency were in other counties or
in the United States, or if the botnets could have been recaptured by
criminals.
Many botnet operations disable the machines' security software, leaving
them vulnerable to new attacks by others.
In a written statement, an NSA spokeswoman said: "As the President
affirmed on 17 January, signals intelligence shall be collected
exclusively where there is a foreign intelligence or counterintelligence
purpose to support national and departmental missions, and not for any
other purposes.
"Moreover, Presidential Policy Directive 28 affirms that all persons -
regardless of nationality - have legitimate privacy interests in the
handling of their personal information, and that privacy and civil
liberties shall be integral considerations in the planning of U.S.
signals intelligence activities."
The Intercept article and supporting slides showed that the NSA had
sought the means to automate the deployment of its tools for capturing
email, browsing history and other information in order to reach as many
as millions of machines.
It did not say whether such widespread efforts, which included
impersonating web pages belonging to Facebook Inc and other companies,
were limited to computers overseas.
If it did pursue U.S. computers, the NSA also could have minimized
information about those users.
The NSA Posed as Facebook To Better Spy on You
Youre probably already well aware that the National Security Agency is
spying on you. A new report from The Intercept reveals yet another place
theyre doing it.
The NSA pretended to be Facebookyou know, that 500-million person social
networkso it could trick you into downloading invasive malware. Per the
piece:
"In some cases the NSA has masqueraded as a fake Facebook server, using
the social media site as a launching pad to infect a targets computer
and exfiltrate files from a hard drive," Ryan Gallagher and Glenn
Greenwald report. "In others, it has sent out spam emails laced with the
malware, which can be tailored to covertly record audio from a
computers microphone and take snapshots with its webcam."
Its a variation on a common scheme called phishing, in which an entity
poses as an official site, gains your trust and then exploits it.
Usually, the perpetrators are small-time crooks, and not the U.S.
government.
These particular tactics were apparently once only reserved for a small
number of difficult targets who couldnt be monitored via traditional
wiretaps. But according to documents obtained by The Intercept, the NSA
has recently expanded this technology so that these little malware mines
around the internet, dubbed implants, can scale to large size (millions
of implants) by creating a system that does automated control implants
by groups instead of individually.
In other words, the NSA designed a surveillance system that skirted
actual human oversight so that they could spread malware to millions of
computers. Malware that allows them to see everything youve saved on
your computer. Not cool.
Even worse? This type of spying actually weakens computer security
systems, immediately making any NSA target vulnerable to third-party
attacks, a malware expert told The Intercept.
The NSA declined to answer specific questions about this project. As the
president made clear on 17 January, the agency said in a statement,
signals intelligence shall be collected exclusively where there is a
foreign intelligence or counterintelligence purpose to support national
and departmental missions, and not for any other purposes.
These revelations come just on the heels of the South by Southwest
Interactive conference, which hosted a talk with Edward Snowden on
Monday. The former NSA contractor and whistleblower urged technologists
to begin designing products which focus on individual security.
Technologists, hurry up, please.
162,000 WordPress Sites Used in DDoS Attack
More than 162,000 popular and clean WordPress sites were recently used
in a large-scale distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) that
exploited the content management systems pingback feature.
While the WordPress team is aware of the issue its not expected to be
patched as its a default feature on WordPress, not a flaw, meaning its
a problem that will likely be left up to site developers to mitigate.
Attackers abused a number of sites that have the feature, essentially
XML-RPC requests that make it easy for blogs to cross-reference other
blog posts, enabled.
Daniel Cid, the CTO of security firm Sucuri, described the attack, which
took down a undisclosed website belonging to one of the firms clients,
in a blog post on Monday.
According to Cid the attack appears to have used the application-layer
(Layer 7) HTTP Flood Attack style of DDoS, which are harder to detect as
the requests look like theyre coming from legitimate sites.
In this case they were legitimate sites, 162,000 of them, sending random
requests at a very large scale to the sites server, each one with a
randomized value that bogged their site down by bypassing their cache and
mandating a full page reload each time.
Unlike conventional DDoS attacks that use NTP and DNS, this attack,
reflective in nature, used the websites as indirect source amplification
vectors. While WordPress sites were the victim this time around, experts
say any site could technically be tweaked to dole out this kind of flood
attack.
We would likely have detected a lot more sites, but we decided we had
seen enough and blocked the requests at the edge firewall, mostly to
avoid filling the logs with junk, Cid wrote.
Since the POST requests were sent to /xmlrpc.php request theyre easy
to find in logs, so Cid is encouraging WordPress developers to check
theirs to ensure that their sites arent vulnerable and attacking other
WordPress sites.
Developers can also use a scanner the firm came up with this week to check
its logs to tell if certain WordPress sites are DDoSing other websites.
If found, Cid claims users can remedy the situation by either disabling
XML-RPC pingback or creating a plugin to add a filter to block these kind
of pingbacks. Users interested in learning more on how to do that can
head over to their blog.
As Johannes B. Ullrich, chief technology officer at the SANS Technology
Institute adds, removing xmlrpc.php is not a recommended option as it
will break a number of other features that will use the API.
Bitcoin Exchange Mt. Gox Files for U.S. Bankruptcy as Death Spiral Continues
The Mt. Gox death spiral continues. The big-name bitcoin exchange has now
filed for bankruptcy protection here in the U.S., as well as Japan, and
hackers are saying theyve uncovered evidence of fraud at the Tokyo-based
company, after allegedly breaking into a website controlled by its CEO.
Mt. Gox was once the most popular site for buying and selling the digital
cryptocurrency bitcoin. But last month, after months of complains from
users unable to withdraw funds, the company took its entire operation
offline and filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan. The new U.S. filing,
made in Texas, is meant to protect the companys U.S.-based assets, as
reported by The Wall Street Journal. Mt. Gox is facing a class-action
lawsuit filed in Illinois, and it has long been involved in a $75 million
lawsuit with another bitcoin company, called CoinLab.
The ongoing travails of Mt. Gox act as a metaphor for the bitcoin world as
a whole. Though the digital currency is beginning to remake the way the
world moves and stores money, many of the companies and individuals that
first pushed the technology into the mainstream are now struggling to come
to terms with government regulations and the realities of doing business.
At a press conference last month, Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles admitted that
the company lost around 750,000 of its customers bitcoins worth around
half a billion dollars. He blamed a known issue in the bitcoin protocol
that enabled hackers to trick the companys software into thinking
transactions failed. Apparently, Goxs accounting software didnt deal
with this flaw and could be tricked to send repeated bitcoin payouts to
the same customers.
How Mt. Gox could have lost so many bitcoins without noticing remains a
matter of speculation, and many suspect foul play on the companys part,
not just mere incompetence. Among them are the hackers that hijacked
Karpeles personal website and published a file they claim contains data
acquired from the companys servers. Included in the file was an Excel
spreadsheet showing a balance of 951,116 bitcoins.
The hackers, who also hijacked Karpeles Reddit account, claim the
document proves that Mt. Gox is still in control of those bitcoins. But
given Mt. Goxs claim that the bitcoins were stolen without anyone at the
company noticing, it would make sense that the companys official balance
sheets still show a much larger number of bitcoins. Ultimately, even if
the document is authentic, it proves nothing one way or the other.
Many Reddit users claim to have found their own transaction data in the
spreadsheet, suggesting that the materials are authentic. But Forbes
reporter Andy Greenberg warns that the zip file may contain malware
designed to steal bitcoins and cautions people not to download the
file. Neither Karpeles nor Mt. Gox responded to a request for comment
about the spreadsheets origins or authenticity.
The alleged hack follows a number of other leaks and hacks from the
company, including a leaked internal document about the missing bitcoins
and supposed copies of the code used to run the exchange. Meanwhile,
Bitcoin users are dealing with the bankruptcy in their own way: by
creating a new currency to buy and sell rights to the lost bitcoins,
should they ever be recovered.
Mind Your Wallet: Why the Underworld Loves Bitcoin
Criminals may already have made off with up to $500 million worth of
Bitcoin since the virtual currency launched in 2009 and you can double
that if it turns out they emptied Mt. Gox.
Internet criminals, security experts say, are attracted to Bitcoin because
of its stratospheric rise in value, because its easier to steal than real
money, and because its easier to trade with other criminal elements. But,
they add, Bitcoin will survive the damage.
Its just growing pains, says Keith Jarvis, a security researcher at
Dell SecureWorks. Bitcoin is large enough and has enough momentum behind
it to survive any public relations damage from this (Mt. Gox) case or
anything else.
The fall of Mt. Gox, the Tokyo-based exchange that filed for bankruptcy
last month after saying it lost some 850,000 bitcoins to hackers, is
certainly the virtual currencys biggest crisis.
But data collated by Reuters from specialist Bitcoin industry websites
and Internet forums shows that more than 730,000 bitcoins were already
missing to theft, hacking, cyber-ransom payments and other apparently
criminal pursuits before Mt. Goxs collapse. Thats nearly 6 percent of
all bitcoins and doesnt include dozens, possibly hundreds, of
unreported cases of individuals who have lost bitcoins from their
computers or online exchanges to hackers.
For sure, theres no way of telling who has these missing bitcoins or
whether they were converted to real money when the price was much lower.
And of course some bitcoins may have been counted twice if criminals
stole them from each other or if they were put back into circulation and
stolen again.
But theres no question that bitcoins have attracted the attention of
cyber-criminals as a currency and an asset worth stealing.
A study by Pat Litke and Joe Stewart of Dell SecureWorks showed that as
the price of bitcoin soared beyond $1,000 last year, so did the number of
viruses designed to steal bitcoins from wallets programs that hold
bitcoins on peoples computers or smartphones. Of the 140 types of such
software, more than 100 appeared in the past year.
Writing such viruses, Stewart says, is easy. Theres no sophistication
involved in the storage of bitcoin in wallets. As for malware, its some
of the easiest stuff to write.
Indeed, this cyber pocket-picking wasnt criminals first foray into
bitcoins. Initially, they focused on using their control of large
networks of infected computers called botnets to make their own
bitcoins.
Bitcoins are created through a mining process where a computers
resources are used to perform millions of calculations. For a while, says
Kirill Levchenko, a researcher at the University of California, San
Diego, criminals added malware to their botnets to turn infected
computers into bitcoin miners.
This triggered predictions of doom for bitcoin that the criminals would
take over the mining of bitcoin through botnets and bring the whole
currency crashing down. But as bitcoins become harder to mine according
to an algorithm that slows down their production the more people try to
create them this approach has proved less profitable.
In 2012 and 2013, says Danny Huang, another researcher at the University
of California, San Diego, botnets earned at least 4,500 bitcoins, a
relatively small sum compared with the total produced. Few botnets are
mining bitcoins now, he says.
Instead, criminals have turned to stealing them from wallets or, more
lucratively, from exchanges.
According to data compiled last year by academics Tyler Moore and Nicolas
Christin, of 40 exchanges tracked, 18 had closed, with customer balances
wiped out in many cases not always, they point out, due to fraud. Since
then, according to public reports, more than a dozen others have been
hacked.
Cyber-criminals have also made use of the ease with which bitcoins can be
traded without any third party such as a bank or an online payments
service like PayPal to use it as at least one way of paying for
services among themselves.
Bitcoin made it much easier for them, because they have to trust each
other even less. Even complete strangers can cooperate, said Juraj
Bednár, a Bitcoin security expert in Slovakia.
But while Bitcoin has its advantages, its not a perfect tool for the bad
guys.
Take, for example, ransomware. Viruses that encrypt data and then demand
payment for a key to unlock it have become increasingly sophisticated,
says Dell SecureWorks Jarvis.
The most successful: CryptoLocker, which Jarvis believes is run by a
Russian-speaking gang who are also behind a botnet called Gameover Zeus
that targets financial websites.
Bitcoin often appears on CryptoLocker as an option for victims to pay up.
Its appeal, Bednár says, lies in the fact that it needs no third party for
the transaction to work.
But there have been problems. For one thing, the type of person to be
infected by a virus wasnt likely to be the type who is technologically
savvy enough to be familiar with Bitcoin. Also, as Bitcoin rose in value,
it became a more expensive option for the victim, forcing the criminals
to lower their ransom demands to match prevailing exchange rates.
Then theres Bitcoins transparency. All transactions are visible, and
while theyre just digits and letters, in theory they could be connected
to an individual and the entire history of all the bitcoins transactions
traced.
Italian computer engineer Michele Spagnuolo, for example, was able to
trace a number of ransom payments for CryptoLocker. The gains have been
impressive: He and academics from Politecnico di Milano speculate that up
to 6,757 bitcoins then worth around $6 million could be linked to
those behind CryptoLocker late last year. That estimate of their total
takings, he says, could be very conservative.
But the fact that such payments can be traced would raise a red flag for
cyber-criminals, says Daniel Cohen of RSA, the security division of EMC,
even though there are online services that can launder bitcoins to hide
their origin. Sure, there are Bitcoin laundering services, but still if
I tie a wallet to an identity I can see every single movement, he said.
And, ironically, the success that some criminals have had in stealing
bitcoins has made them less appealing to the underworld. RSAs Cohen says
his team monitoring underground forums has noticed that criminals lately
see Bitcoin as volatile, seizable and, with the recent thefts, unsafe.
Thats not to say Bitcoin is out of the woods.
While the protocols underlying Bitcoin have proved themselves to work, the
weak links have been the software containing the wallets, whether on
exchanges or on individuals computers.
The attacks on the exchanges did not in themselves indicate any
particular weakness of Bitcoin per se, but rather exploiting
vulnerabilities within the exchanges, says Raj Samani of Intels Internet
security company McAfee.
Such holes are being addressed, says Dell SecureWorks Stewart, pointing
to such innovations as hardware wallets to replace software ones. Were
just going to have to get into that mode of thinking, he says.
For now, Bitcoin remains a vulnerable target.
That was illustrated when hackers breached Mt. Goxs servers and its
owners blog this week to post files purporting to be Mt. Goxs
transactions in Bitcoin stretching back to 2011.
Amid the files lurked another surprise awaiting the unwary: a
Bitcoin-stealing virus.
Facebook's Menlo Park Headquarters Evacuated After Threat
The headquarters of social media giant Facebook was temporarily flooded
with officers and cordoned off Tuesday evening after a threat against the
company was called in to authorities, Menlo Park police said, but the
threat was quickly cleared.
The threat was originally called into the San Francisco Police Department
around 7 p.m., said Menlo Park police Cmdr. Dave Bertini.
The department transferred the call to Menlo Park officers, who went to
the campus and closed off the entrance with tape. Officers searched the
campus, while the company asked its employees to stay put before police
could prove or disprove the threat.
"At this point, we're not even sure the call was meant to be for the
Menlo Park campus," Bertini said.
Officers did not find anything at the campus, and Facebook eventually
shuttled its employees home.
Bertini added that he could not say what the threat was, only that it was
proven to be "non-credible."
The company, founded in 2004, has more than 6,000 employees. Thousands of
those workers report to the company's main campus at 1601 Willow Avenue,
an address that was rechristened as "1 Hacker Way" after the company took
over the old Sun Microsystems campus.
Last week, Menlo Park's city council voted last week to allow the company
to pay about $200,000 a year to the city to fund a full-time police
officer who would be stationed near the new campus.
Twitter Suffers Service Issues
Twitter reported a service outage Tuesday, saying most people were having
issues accessing its widely used messaging service on the web and
through mobile applications.
Were looking into it. Well post updates to our status blog as we have
them, company spokeswoman Christina Thiry told Reuters via email.
Further details on the cause of the outage were not immediately
available.
U.S. Said To Relinquish Control of Internet Address System
The U.S. plans to hand over control of the system for assigning website
addresses to a non-government entity, an Obama administration official
said.
The agency has asked the non-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers to convene interested groups from around the world to
develop a proposal to transition the system, said Lawrence Strickling,
administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information
Administration in a phone call with reporters today.
We will not accept a proposal that replaces the NTIA role with a
government or intergovernmental organization, Strickling said.
The move represents the final phase in the U.S. governments effort to
privatize the backbone of the Internet that provides websites with their
unique identifiers, which are essential for users to find what theyre
looking for online. U.S. control over Internet functions has come under
attack from privacy advocates and foreign governments in the wake of
revelations about National Security Agency spying.
NTIA plans to allow its contract with the Internet Assigned Numbers
Authority to expire on Sept. 30, 2015, Strickland said. It isnt clear
yet what organization or groups will take over its responsibilities to
maintain unique codes and numbering systems that are used in the
technical standards that drive the Internet.
The U.S. is fulfilling a pledge it made as far back as 1998 to relinquish
control of the Internets domain name system, Fadi Chehade, president and
chief executive officer of ICANN, told reporters on the conference call.
We thank the U.S. government for its stewardship, for its guidance over
the years, Chehade said. And we thank them today for trusting the
global community to replace their stewardship with appropriate oversight
mechanisms.
How to Avoid Phishing Scams
Phishing is an age-old Internet pothole. Its survived since the early
ages of AOL chatrooms for one simple reason: It really works. The setup is
simple: A bad guy poses as a trusted entity online to steal your personal
information.
Just ask the U.S. government, which we recently learned has adopted
phishing techniques to spy on millions of people. Its probably about
time you learn a little about how to avoid getting phished yourself, no?
Phishing is the online version of being conned. Imagine Leonardo
DiCaprios character from Catch Me If You Can but less charming. These
scammers sit at their computers and pretend to be legitimate trusted
companies (like Microsoft or Netflix) as a way of tricking you into
handing over personal details like login info, credit card numbers and
sometimes even money.
Phishing comes in many forms: emails that seem like theyre from Wells
Fargo or Facebook, instant messages or communications from people on
popular social networks like Twitter or Facebook. It all starts with a
link. Once you click it, youre redirected to a pharming website that
looks identical to whichever company the scammer is posing as. Youre
then prompted to enter your login information.
From there, scammers might lure you to other sites or try to trick you
into downloading attachments that unleash viruses, keystroke-tracking
software or other malware.
You are most certainly an intelligent human being who can smell the stink
of a sleazy salesman or a tourist trap. But when it comes to phishing,
you might be less savvy than you think. Last year, researchers at North
Carolina State University asked a group of 53 undergraduates to
distinguish malicious emails from legitimate ones, and nearly everyone
in the group failed. Keep in mind that these were students, meaning that
they were likely young Internet natives. In other words, scammers are
getting just as sophisticated as the people theyre exploiting.
OK, OK. What are a few things I should look out for?
Glad you asked! Heres the super-simple version:
Dont click on hyperlinks in emails from people you dont know. This
piece of advice is a little less obvious than you think. Yes, your
mother, husband, sister and aunt are not trying to send you spam. But
that doesnt mean that their email accounts arent vulnerable to being
hacked. So always make sure to hover your mouse over the linked phrase
in question. Usually the address of the item will pop up in a gray box
at the bottom-left corner of your browser. Like so:
If it doesnt look familiar, steer clear.
Also, smartphone operating systems are currently much less vulnerable
than those of your computer. So if youre unsure about something, try
opening it on your mobile device (Apple products are usually less
vulnerable to viruses). This might protect you from getting malware, but
if you start typing in your bank account number on a phony site, youre
still in a world of trouble.
Verify your web URLs. Whenever you visit a site that requires you to
enter sensitive information (credit card numbers, your Social Security
number or other financial information), check the URL in your search bar.
It should show https:// rather than http://, and usually a secure
connection is displayed with a little padlock image like the one below.
You can double-click the padlock to see the security info that lets your
browser verify that the site youre connecting to is what you think it
is. SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. It keeps all the communication
between your browser and your websites servers private and secure.
Just completely ignore pop-up windows. Pop-up windows are inherently
sketchy because without a bar that displays a sites URL, you cant
actually verify that its a secure site. So dont enter your sensitive
info into one, and always make sure to click the X in the top corner of
the box to get rid of them. Clicking the Cancel button can sometimes send
you to a link, or automatically install malware.
Look out for weirdly formal language. Modern companies dont usually
write royal English or handpick their customers to receive thousands of
dollars. If anyone calls you Sir or Madame in an email and shes not
the Dowager Countess from Downton Abbey, its probably a scam.
Do I have to, like, download some software?
Yeah, thatd be a good idea.
First and foremost, you should get antivirus software that will help
protect you from bad stuff floating around online. The type you should
choose depends entirely on your operating system. Heres a good resource
for PC owners. And if you dont want to spend any money, this is a legit
list of free services. Whatever you choose, make sure to keep it up to
date. Your web browser is much more susceptible to a hijacking if your
security software goes stale.
Anti-spam software isnt essential, but it lowers your chances of
falling victim to a phishing attack, since many of them come in spam
form. PC Mag has an extensive list here. And many browsers provide
add-ons that help protect your computer. Chrome, for instance, has a free
AdBlock extension. So does Firefox.
And then theres anti-spyware software. Unlike malware, which is
intended to damage or disable your computer system, spyware infiltrates
your hard drive to collect information. This is something that Windows
owners, above all others, must be cautious of. Heres a list of free
anti-spyware software that can prevent the problem before it happens.
This is really overwhelming.
I feel you. And this is the simple version.
Why cant companies just make products more secure from the get-go?
Youre not alone in asking that! Former NSA contractor and whistleblower
Edward Snowden said he thinks they should, too, at South by Southwest
this week.
That doesnt make me feel any better.
Sorry!
Asus Chromebox: A Tiny, Cheap, Very Useful Computer
I roll my eyes when people claim that were living in the post-PC era.
I mean, we do live in the post-VCR era. And the post-zeppelin era. And the
poststeam locomotive era.
And its true that sales of Windows PCs are dropping a few percent a year,
thanks to the rise of smartphones and tablets. But to say that nobody has
them anymore? Yeah, no.
Thats not to say that things arent changing. Our lives are moving
online. Recently, a friend said Whoa, you almost forgot your laptop!
Youd lose all your data your whole life! But actually, I wouldnt
lose much of anything. Almost every important thing on my laptop is
stored online and backed up automatically: email, calendar, address book,
documents, photos, and so on.
Thats all the setup you need to understand the appeal of the new Asus
Chromebox. Its among the least-expensive desktop computers ever sold
$180 and certainly among the smallest. Its a 1.7-inch-tall square
slab, 4.9 inches on a side; the computer isnt much bigger than its own
power brick. You could slip this thing into a coat pocket on your way
out the door. It could pass for a generously sized brownie.
That price and those dimensions, of course, account only for the computer
itself. Mouse, keyboard and monitor arent included. Those accessories
might cost another $75 or more. Or less, depending on what youve got
lying around your house and how cheap a shopper you are.
The big thing, though, is that the Chromebox doesnt run Windows or Mac
OS X. The Chromebox is the desktop version of Googles Chromebook laptop
concept, which means that its intended exclusively for doing things
online.
Yes, its true: A Chrome PC cant run traditional programs like Photoshop,
Microsoft Office, iTunes, Quicken, or Minecraft. (Some would say, Thank
goodness.)
It runs the Flash plug-in, but it cant run browser plug-ins like Java or
Silverlight, which means that a few web-based games and video playback
sites wont work. If you hook up a webcam, you can conduct video chats
using Googles Hangouts feature but you cant use Skype.
What you can do is check email, build spreadsheets, watch movies on
Netflix, chat up friends on Facebook, share photos on Instagram, stream
music on Pandora, surf the web and so on. (That quotation comes from
fellow Yahoo Tech columnist Dan Tynans terrific introduction to
Chromebooks here.)
And, of course, you can use all of Googles online products: Google Docs
(for working with Microsoft Word and Excel documents), Gmail, Google
Maps, Google Calendar, Google+ and so on.
There are apps that run on Chromebooks and Chromeboxes, but not very
many, and theyre not as complete, polished or famous as their Windows
and Mac forbears. For most people, theyre a fairly unimportant part of
the Should I buy a Chrome machine? calculation.
Why buy Chrome?
Chrome computers are cheap, fast, easy to use and secure (no viruses!).
Chrome machines make phenomenal kitchen computers, for example great
for quick lookups, debate-settling, waiting-for-the-cable-guy surfing.
Theyre fantastic for kids, whose lives (including schoolwork) are
primarily online these days. And for anyone or any family, a Chrome
machine makes a superb second or third computer.
The new machine, the Asus Chromebox, is everything its supposed to be.
Its incredibly inexpensive. Its fast to set up and fast to respond. It
has no fan, so its completely silent. It has plenty of connectors: four
USB jacks (the fast 3.0 kind), an HDMI jack for connecting a TV, a
DisplayPort for a projector or a monitor, an Ethernet jack, audio, and
even a slot for the memory card from your camera. WiFi is, of course,
built in.
Theres 16 gigabytes of storage inside (many apps can store themselves on
the box, for use when you dont have an Internet connection) but
theres also 100 gigabytes of storage waiting for you online from Google.
You get that massive storage locker at no charge for two years. Thats a
lot of Word and Excel documents. (You can work with those, remember,
thanks to the free Google Docs site online.)
A faster version of the Asus is coming in April for $370 doesnt really
seem worth it and a matching keyboard/mouse package is coming soon for
$50.
The Chrome computer idea appeals to an awful lot of people, and its
picking up speed. But most of those people buy Chromebook laptops. Why
would anyone buy a desktop version of the same thing, one that you cant
pick up and use on the plane?
There are reasons.
First, theres a slight price advantage. The Asus Chromebox costs $180;
Chrome laptops cost $200 or $250 and up. (Samsung and others make
Chromebox desktop computers, too. But theyre bigger than the Asus and
more expensive $300 and up.)
Second, a desktop version lets you plug in any monitor you want. Any
brand, any size. Two simultaneously, actually. You can even plug in a TV,
courtesy of the Chromeboxs HDMI jack. (Then again, the laptop versions
let you plug in an external monitor of your choice, too.)
Third, the Asus is so tiny you can mount it on the wall heck, you can
duct-tape it to the back of your monitor. That opens up new possibilities
if you have cramped or cluttered working quarters, or if you plan to
connect it to your TV for Netflix and movie watching.
Those are pretty flimsy reasons, actually. If youre in the target
demographic for a Chrome machine for example, if you oversee children,
a school, a library or a home with more than one room youre probably
better off with a Chrome laptop a Chromebook like the $200 Acer
Chromebook shown here.
But choice makes the world go round. The Chrome PC idea is, in its way, a
beautiful addition to the technology world, because things that are fast,
cheap, simple, reliable and good at what they do are always welcome. And
while more people buy laptops than desktops these days, its nice to know
that a desktop option is there.
Incidentally: Ive heard, on occasion, the following logic used to dismiss
the whole idea of Chrome computers. OK, its cheap but its not a real
computer! Its like buying a new car for $1,000 that cant make left
turns.
Is that the right analogy, though? Is a computer that cant run Windows
or Mac programs as crippled as all that?
No. In a world where a new car costs an average of $20,000, a Chromebox
(or Chromebook) is more like getting a Smart car two-seater for $1,000.
You wont be hauling lumber from Home Depot in it, but its a terrific
deal and most days, itll get you where you want to go.
WhatsMyBrowser.org Is A Simple, Clean Site That Identifies Your Browser
Have you ever been on the phone with tech support, and the IT dude or
dudette asked you what web browser you were running, and you panicked and
realized that you had no idea, and also you werent sure where that
information could possibly be, so you start shuffling papers around on
your desk, stammering into the receiver, trying to buy time, and then you
just hang up the phone?
Well, panic no more, friend: A single-serving website called
WhatsMyBrowser is here to help. Visit WhatsMyBrowser.org andvoilà!all
your pertinent browser information pops up. In addition to identifying
your browser, the website also gives you your computers operating
system, tells you whether you have cookies enabled, and displays several
other pertinent bits of information that the IT department might need.
The site also generates a unique web page that you can copy and send to
whomever youre working with. Pretty, right?
In rigorous tests here at the Yahoo offices, WhatsMyBrowser was able
to
correctly identify the versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Safari on my
laptop. No need to dig through menus on your PC: Just visit the website
and youre set.
Now, this is not the first website to perform this task for you.
Competitors like Support Details let you quickly email your results
directly from the site, and WhatIsMyBrowser.com gives you more
information, including an IP address. Those are more robust options that
prioritize density over design.
WhatsMyBrowser.org, however, is cleaner and easier to navigate than any
other site like this that Ive seen. It also puts the sharing
information right up top. My advice: You should bookmark this pageor at
least one like it!for the next time youve got to wrestle with tech
support. Because the question What browser are you using? shouldnt
send a cold shiver down your spine.
Microsoft Is Paying Windows XP Users To Jump Ship
The end of support for Windows XP is drawing ever closer, and Microsoft is
sparing no expense making sure users move out of the outdated platform.
In the company's latest move, it's now offering Windows XP users $50
(about £30, AU$55) in credit towards any Windows 8 tablet, laptop or
all-in-one desktop at the Microsoft Store.
Alongside the gift card, Microsoft is also giving away 90 days of premium
support for no extra charge to help customers make the transition. The
service includes 24/7 phone and chat support to help with getting set up
on a new PC.
Finally, the Redmond firm is extending a free data transfer service
through Laplink. The data migration service will help users move over
everything on their hard drives to a new machine, including photos,
videos, music, and other files for free.
The offer is only valid from now to April 30, so act quickly.
Microsoft has slowly been bringing down the curtain on Windows XP. Along
with a final patch coming April 8, Security Essentials on the old
operating system will no longer be supported.
After losing the built-in firewall and security suite, the company has
promised to continue providing anti-malware support through July 2015.
Third-party vendors have promised to continue protecting Windows XP with
their own anti-malware solutions. However, without any more official
security patches coming from Microsoft, it's clear the sun is setting on
the old OS.
Inventor of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee: The Web Should Reflect Human Rights
The World Wide Web celebrates its 25th birthday March 12, 2014. And
theres nobody better to discuss that milestone than the man who invented
the webs protocols, Sir Tim Berners-Lee (yes, hes been knighted).
In this interview, conducted at SXSW this week, Sir Tim and I discuss
where the idea of the web came from and what inspiration he took from
previous systems and ideas.
As Berners-Lee points out, many people pushed back on the idea at first.
While the Internet existed 25 years ago, people were still information and
systems hoarders. They didnt, at first, see the advantage of exposing all
their data to the world.
But why did Berners-Lee make entering web addresses so clunky? He explains
what the http:// in front of every web address means and why it was
important in the early days.
The web at 25, Berners-Lee says, is like a young adult. Its independent,
a thing unto itself. It has rights, though, and responsibilities.
Berners-Lee also thinks the web should reflect accurately the rights (and
responsibilities) of all who use it. There are certain rights that
should be more enshrined, he says.
He notes that the web can be a tool for both freedom and oppression.
Some countries use the web to take power away from citizens, to spy on
them, he says. He notes that corporate control of the web, or of laws
that affect it, can be very bad for the web. Corporate-sponsored laws
that restrict information flow will continue to pop up, he predicts.
Berners-Lee said that, 25 years ago, he had no idea the web would be so
important and so influential in the growth of business and society. Hed
like to see engineers use more of their social intelligence to build
websites that will be used to interact with people from other cultures,
to combat xenophobia and ignorance.
But what really dismays Berners-Lee is the growth of spam email. Its a
waste of bandwidth and time, he says.
Looking to the future, Berners-Lee is excited about the switch from static
web pages to sites that can be programmed just like a computer. Thats a
massive change, he says. Its leading to real-time communication among
web pages, and a new way of making powerful things.
In the next 25 years, Berners-Lee would like to see the web give people
control over where their data is stored. And, of course, to making sure
that the underlying infrastructure is free and that it supports, not
hinders, peoples rights.
Tim Berners-Lee: The Web Needs Its Freedom
Today is a landmark anniversary for Tim Berners-Lee. In March 1989 he
wrote a proposal to his employers at CERN for a somewhat abstract "global
hypertext" system he called Mesh. A year later he re-named that system
the World Wide Web. It caught on.
A quarter of a century later, Berners-Lee is like a proud father, seeing
his baby all grown up and making its way in the world without him.
"I feel a certain amount of inventor's pride," he tells CNN. "My greatest
pride has been the spirit of collaboration we've had for the last 25
years."
He's watched the Web grow through a carefree childhood and turbulent
adolescence, reaching the kind of age when things suddenly get more
serious, and it's time to make some important decisions about the future.
"At 25 it's more like a young adult," he explains. "Suddenly it needs its
independence; young adults are at the stage when they're looking for
freedom, and in terms of what they do they're asserting their rights.
When (systems) break the whistle blower is the person who saves society
by pointing out something that nobody else will.
"Now, 25 years on, Web users are realizing they need human rights on the
Web ... We need independence of the Web for democracy, we need
independence of the Web to be able to support the press, we need
independence of the Web in general. It's becoming very important to sort
out all that."
Recent years have been marked by growing pains. Revelations of mass
surveillance by the NSA and other agencies have caused international
outrage. Arguments over net neutrality persist and copyright wars
pitching open-net activists against mainstream creative industries have
grown bitter, with Berners-Lee himself criticized at times. The stock
and use of illicit material has grown with the dark net.
Berners-Lee is clear that our ability to speak and associate freely is
under threat. The widespread data gathering of the NSA revealed a
"broken" system, he believes, and he praises whistle blowers like Edward
Snowden whose leaks expose the excesses.
"When (systems) break the whistle blower is the person who saves society
by pointing out something that nobody else will, because it's illegal,"
he says. "One thing I'd like to see built in the future is an
international convention and international respect for whistle blowers."
If spying is one threat, Berners Lee believes censorship is another. He
recalls the situation in Egypt, where the Internet was cut off at the
height of anti-government protests in January 2011. "For a lot of people
that was the first time they realized you could turn it off, and they
asked themselves, who could turn it off for me?" he says, adding that
"turning off the Internet is more or less a signal that the regime does
not trust its citizens and that the regime is on the way out."
At 58, Berners-Lee is not taking a back seat. Having invented the Web
once, he hopes to re-invent it through the "Web We Want" initiative,
aiming to create a universal "Internet Users Bill of Rights."
Key targets of the manifesto include spreading net access to the nearly
two thirds of the world that still doesn't have it. Establishing clear
regulations is also a priority, as is the protection of personal user
information.
Berners-Lee still enjoys enough power over his creation to make big
changes realistic, through two authorities he founded and continues to
lead. The World Wide Web Consortium (WC3) determines standards for all Web
infrastructure, backed by the world's leading academic institutions and
software developers. The Web Foundation manages the spread and ethical
application of the Web, bringing pressure to bear on governments through
initiatives such as The Web Index, which ranks nations by Internet access
standards.
The Web We Want campaign will rely on mass mobilization across
industries, nations and activist bodies to succeed, but Berners-Lee is
confident of fostering a spirit of cooperation. He has seen it before
and considers it the Web's greatest accomplishment.
"It's really a story of collaboration, people working painstakingly on
getting protocols right ... There's an international spirit that ignores
boundaries," he says.
As for what the Web will look like over the next 25 years, as it enters
its middle age, Berners Lee sees a smarter Web emerging, with users
empowered by the huge amounts of personal information collected as part
of the "Web of data" - information that could help personalize our Web
experience.
"People are worrying about what other people are doing with their data,"
he says, "but they haven't realized what they can do with their own
data."
As we grow more connected to, and reliant on, the Web, so the potential
for abuse increases. How we use such a powerful tool amounts to a test of
our species, says Berners-Lee, but it's one he is confident we can pass
together.
"In general the Web enables humanity to be more powerful and that power
can be used for good things and to do horrible things - but on balance
when it comes to humanity I'm a tremendous optimist."
=~=~=~=
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