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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 17 Issue 02
Volume 17, Issue 02 Atari Online News, Etc. January 9, 2015
Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2015
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 #1702 01/09/15
~ Sony Hackers Got Sloppy ~ People Are Talking! ~ Classic Video Games!
~ FCC on Net Neutrality! ~ New Bitcoin Loss Claim ~ MIT Sites Defaced!
~ Win 8.1 Vulnerability! ~ US Did Not Hack Back! ~ Macro-based Malware!
~ Protecting Free Speech! ~ ~ Facebook Adults: 58%
-* Anticipated Games for 2015! *-
-* Hacking Group Publishes Xbox One SDK *-
-* Strange Resurrection of Atari's Buried ET! *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Is there any "good" news in the world these days?? It seems like
everything being seen on television or in the newspaper is negative
and/or morbid! Our thoughts these days go out to publication of
Charlie Hebdo, where 12 people were executed by terrorists this past
week. More atrocities carried out by self-proclaimed religious zealots!
The nut cases are trying to take control of the world - truly not
something really new, is it?
How have you all been faring lately with this weather? For the first
time in a number of years, we woke up here one morning this week to
temperatures in the negative numbers! And, add in the wind gusts, we
were feeling it in the double-digits!
So, while we do whatever we can here to stay warm, we hope you curl up
somewhere comfortable and take a gander at this week's issue!
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - The Strange Resurrection of Atari's Long-Buried E.T.!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Most Anticipated Video Games for 2015!
Hacking Group Publishes Xbox One SDK!
And much more!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Legend of Zelda, Batman: Arkham Knight Among Anticipated Video Games for 2015
Link, Master Chief, Batman and Nathan Drake will be back in action.
The leading men are among the protagonists starring in totally new video
game instalments in 2015, joined by newcomers like a team of
intergalactic monster hunters and their prey (Evolve), a band of
high-tech criminals and their tails (Battlefield Hardline) and a
battalion of explorers and their procedurally generated universe (No
Man's Sky).
The gaming line-up for 2015 also includes a pair of original
Victorian-inspired tales (Bloodborne, The Order: 1886), the return of two
long-gone, out-of-this-world gaming franchises (Star Wars: Battlefront,
Star Fox and an expedition into the open-world genre for a long-running
stealth series (Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain).
Here's a glimpse of some of 2015's most anticipated games:
Batman: Arkham Knight: After three editions of stomping, gliding and
grappling through a virtual Gotham, Batman has keys to the Batmobile in
Rocksteady Studios' Dark Knight finale. This time, besides old-school
baddies like Penguin and Scarecrow, Batman is facing off against a new
menace called the Arkham Knight. (for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC;
June 2)
Promotional trailers for Battlefield: Hardline were criticised for its
bombastic version of cops versus robbers in light of the recent protests
against police violence in the U.S. (Electronic Arts/Associated Press)
Battlefield Hardline: Visceral Games is dodging the military in favour of
an interactive game of cops and robbers in the latest entry of the
first-person Battlefield shooter series. The war-on-crime action will
include bank heists, police chases and hostage rescue missions. (for
PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PC; March 17)
Bloodborne: Dark Souls mastermind Hidetaka Miyazaki takes a stab at the
PlayStation 4 with this relentless role-playing title set in a gothic
enclave that's been overrun by infected monsters. Bloodborne, much like
predecessors Dark Souls and Demon's Souls, is expected to be quite the
nightmare. (for PlayStation 4; March 24)
Evolve: After tackling team-based zombie slaying with Left 4 Dead, Turtle
Rock Studios takes on monster hunting in this multiplayer shooter with a
twist. Instead of equal squads aiming for each other online, Evolve pits
a team of four against one player portraying an oversized, overpowered
behemoth. (for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC; Feb. 10)
Halo 5: Guardians: (for Xbox One, fall 2015): For his latest
interstellar adventure, hardened "Halo" hero Master Chief is joined by a
new companion, fellow supersoldier Locke. Developer 343 Industries has
injected a slew of fresh abilities into the game's multiplayer mode,
including thruster-boosted dodging and ground pounding.
Microsoft hopes to correct the underwhelming response to Halo: Master
Chief Collection with the brand-new Halo 5: Guardians.
(Microsoft/Associated Press)
The Legend of Zelda: Link and his trusty steed Epona are set free in an
expansive open realm in the first original Legend of Zelda adventure
crafted for Nintendo's high-definition, touchscreen-centric Wii U
console. Legend of Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma has promised that Link's
actions will have the ability to reshape his fantasy world. (for Wii U,
2015)
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: Metal Gear's one-man army Snake is
dispatched to Afghanistan during the Cold War to take down Soviet forces.
Phantom Pain seeks to be the most liberating Metal Gear, yet with
sandstorms and daylight affecting the mercenary's stealthy tasks. (for
PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PC; 2015)
No Man's Sky: While most game makers precisely position every polygon
within their creations, the developers at Hello Games are dispatching
players to virtual worlds with randomly generated landscapes, meaning
plants, animals and atmospheres will look different for each person who
picks up this ambitious exploration title. (for PlayStation 4, PC, 2015)
No Man's Sky, by British indie studio Hello Games, promises an entire
galaxy to explore and discover. (Hello Games)
The Order: 1886: In this third-person alternate history romp, the Knights
of the Round Table battle supernatural forces with steampunk gear across
London. The Order creators Ready at Dawn are harnessing the PS4's
souped-up processing power to transport gamers to an intricate and moody
rendition of the foggy city. (for PlayStation 4, Feb. 20)
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End: After surviving a trek through a sprawling
desert and a jaunt through an ancient crumbling city, Uncharted champion
Nathan Drake returns for his first quest on the PS4. This time, the
smart-alecky treasure hunter will be joined by his brother, portrayed by
omnipresent video game actor Troy Baker. (for PlayStation 4; 2015)
Other anticipated titles include: role-playing sequel The Witcher 3: Wild
Hunt; online-only shooter Tom Clancy's The Division; time-bending action
title Quantum Break; a next-gen rendition of Star Wars: Battlefront; Lara
Croft follow-up Rise of the Tomb Raider and Star Fox for the Wii U.
Hacking Group Publishes Xbox One SDK,
Threatens To Leak Unreleased Game Builds
Following Lizard Squad's takedown of the Xbox One network over Christmas,
Microsoft's festive woes continue after another hacking group managed to
get hold of and subsequently release the November 2014 Xbox One software
development kit (SDK).
The group, which calls itself @notHALT on Twitter but which some news
outlets are referring to as H4LT, uploaded the kit and its associated
documentation to file sharing site Mega.
Hey, @Xbox! We thought we'd drop on by and End 2014 with a Bang ;)
Budding bedroom coders will not of course not be able to release their
own programs officially developers must register and be approved
before posting games to Xbox's release channels but @notHALT is hoping
that leaking the SDK could potentially lead to homebrew applications in
the future.
Speaking to the SevenSins website, via Direct Message on Twitter, @notHALT
said:
Once the SDK is out, people who have knowledge or has in the past reversed
files related to the Windows (8) operating system should definitely have
a go at reversing some files in there. Why? Well, the Xbox One is
practically a stripped Windows 8 device and has introduced a new package
format that hasn't had much attention. This format is responsible for
updating the console and storing applications (Games are under the
category of 'Applications' on the Xbox One) and is a modification of
Virtual Hard Disks. There is no definite 'exploit' but from what we have
studied and tested, this simple packaging format could possibly lead us
to creating Homebrew applications for the Xbox One.
In a separate conversation with The Independent newspaper, @notHALT also
claimed to have gained access to a new cloud-based system used by
developers to store early versions of their new games, including
Microsoft-owned 343 Industries' Halo 5 which is yet to receive a firm
release date.
The account that was compromised is not thought to belong to 343
Industries but the hackers say it did give them access to files uploaded
by that company.
@notHALT told The Independent that it hopes to leak the additional files
after speaking with Lizard Squad who it hopes can help with "protection
and stress testing of its systems for when the rest of the data is
leaked".
According to @notHALT, none of its members know anyone within the Lizard
Squad personally but they are in contact with each other.
Internet Archive Offers 2,300+ Classic Video Games To Play Online for Free
Load up your wagon, buy your provisions and hit The Oregon Trail it's
like the '80s all over again.
The Internet Archive, the people who brought us The Wayback Machine, has
made more than 2,300 old let's say classic - MS-DOS games available to
play via streaming. The archive has been working since 2013 to store and
host these video games.
There's our favorite, "The Oregon Trail" (the original and deluxe), but
there's also "SimCity," "Prince of Persia" and "Where in the World is
Carmen Sandiego?" (which, btw, turns 30 this year) among many, many
others.
Jason Scott, longtime curator at the archive, warns that playing might
not be everything you remember - some of the games "will still fall over
and die, and many of them might be weird to play in a browser window."
Scott is also asking gamers to try out the archive's new beta design.
So get out there on the Oregon Trail, but be careful: I got cholera 26
miles down the trail.
More Than 2,000 Classic MS-DOS Games Now Available in Your Browser for Free
The Internet Archive exists to preserve a library of digital content
just as a brick-and-mortar library or a museum preserves physical items
that are culturally significant. And games of course fall into that
category. Ask any gamer what was the first game he played, or the first
game he fell in love with, and sit back and prepare for the passion.
Now gamers older and younger alike can access some of the most iconic
older MS-DOS titles for free, thanks to the Internet Archives efforts
(2015 is off to a productive start). At the time of writing, the
organization had collected some 2,314 old MS-DOS games games that are
no longer playable on current platforms, and therefore might be
considered abandonware and made them available for free on its
website.
Titles include 1990s Prince of Persia, 1990s The Oregon Trail, 1997s
Bust-A-Move, 1992s Wolfenstein 3D, the original Metal Gear from 1990,
1987s Maniac Mansion, 1989s Sim City and even a fan-made update of
1986s original The Legend of Zelda.
The games are playable using a browser-based emulator created by the
Internet Archive for this specific purpose, EM-DOSBOX. Its still in
beta, which means it may occasionally experience a bug here and there;
and, of course, there are no manuals accompanying the titles, so you may
have to rely on trial and error to figure out how to play.
You can check it out for yourself on the Internet Archive website
(https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games/v2).
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE Gaming Online - Online Users Growl & Purr!
"""""""""""""""""""
The Strange Resurrection of Atari's Long-Buried E.T.
The National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonian, has
added a vintage copy of the Atari 2600 video game E.T. the
Extra-Terrestrial to its collection. This particular game is meant to
fill a void in the museum's collection, namely the unrepresented dark
days of the 1980s when the United State video game industry crashed.
This Atari game didn't come from an old collection, though. Rather, it's
an example of the truism that one person's trash is another's treasure.
Many museums around the world feature pieces of art that were recovered
at archeological dig sites, but this game cartridge was unearthed at a
New Mexican landfill.
Atari helped launch the home video game console market in the late 1970s.
By 1982, the company faced intense competition from the likes of Mattel's
Intellivision and Coleco's Colecovision. At the same time, a slew of
independent game developers, hoping to cash in on the install bases of
those consoles, began to flood the market with lackluster titles.
The market already was poised for a crash when Atari made the rash
decision to rush out a game tied to Warner Bros.' hit film E.T. the
Extra-Terrestrial. Atari, which reportedly spent between US$20 million
and $25 million for the rights to the Steven Spielberg film, commissioned
a game title to be produced within six weeks at a time when game
development typically took six to nine months. It needed to sell 4
million copies for the title to be a success.
"That is a lot to pin on one game," said video game industry consultant
P.J. McNealy.
Atari had set itself up for disaster - it shipped fewer than a million
copies.
Still, it is "worth remembering that this is one of the first - if not
the first - big movie tie-ins for games," McNealy told TechNewsWorld.
"The game didn't sell, but it is really a broad stroke. This is part of
the correlation not causation" of the industry's decline.
Since the E.T. games weren't selling at stores, and many that did sell
subsequently were returned, Atari made another rash decision and buried
some of the unsold games in a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico. To
deter people from seeking out the games, Atari claimed they had been
covered by concrete. The company kept their exact location secret.
For more than 30 years, rumors about the location of the site circulated,
and the intense speculation gradually transformed into an urban legend.
Last year, Alamogordo's city council voted to allow gaming company Fuel
Industries to search for the games, and the site was discovered. Dozens
of copies were found, and one was supplied to Smithsonian museum
technician Drew Robarge.
The cartridge and what is left of its packaging have been added to the
permanent collection of The National Museum of American History.
"Despite it being a dreadful game, E.T. represents something more
substantial than bad design," said Jon Gibson, cocurator of Iam8Bit.
"It's a symbol of the game industry's ambition," he told TechNewsWorld.
"They manufactured more E.T. cartridges then there were Atari consoles to
play them on. E.T. is a relic of impossible, hilarious ego."
Atari's E.T. is just one aspect of a much larger problem that developed
during the early days of the game console industry.
"That game has become a symbol of the domestic crash in the video market
that occurred between 1983 and 1985," said Lewis Ward, IDC research
director for gaming.
"Ascribing a multiyear crash like that to a single game is of course a
misleading oversimplification of what happened," he told TechNewsWorld.
"Still, the symbol stuck, and the strange details of the saga - such as
the fact that millions of copies of the game were buried in New Mexico,
like some reverse Roswell - helps to keep the story alive," Ward noted.
"Contrasting the massive hit that was E.T. the movie and the massive flop
of the Atari game tie-in is another memorable juxtaposition," he observed.
"The video game industry was in its infancy in the early '80s. Volatility
is normal in such a young market."
Because the video game industry is just a few decades old, it is somewhat
ironic that one of its historic artifacts was recovered through a type of
archeology. The Smithsonian no doubt sees the tongue-in-cheek value of
pulling an historic flop from the muck and preserving it for posterity.
"From the Smithsonian's perspective, this is a bid to stay relevant among
millennials. They're trying to augment their collection of material that
relates to fairly recent cultural developments," said Ward.
"Gaming tends to be much more popular among youths and younger adults, so
by adding this type of content it may help drive the next generation of
Americans through the turnstiles," he added.
"There are now four generations of gamers," McNealy noted. "The
Smithsonian is finally taking notice of an exciting time for the industry
- even if it was a dark one. Gaming is finally getting its historical
due."
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
FBI Says Sony Hackers 'Got Sloppy,' Posted from North Korea Addresses
FBI Director James Comey said on Wednesday that hackers behind the
cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment provided key clues to their
identity by sometimes posting material from IP addresses used
exclusively by the North Korean government.
The hackers, who called themselves "Guardians of Peace," sometimes "got
sloppy" and failed to use proxy servers that would hide their identity,
Comey said at the International Conference on Cyber Security in New York.
"The Guardians of Peace would send emails threatening Sony employees and
post online various statements explaining their work. In nearly every
case they would use proxy servers in sending those emails and posting
those statements," Comey said.
"But several times they got sloppy. Several times, either because they
forgot or they had a technical problem, they connected directly and we
could see it," Comey said.
"We could see that the IP addresses they used ... were IPs that were
exclusively used by the North Koreans. It was a mistake by them. It was
a very clear indication of who was doing this. They would shut it off
very quickly once they realized the mistake, but not before we saw them
and knew where it was coming from," he added.
Sony's network was crippled by hackers in November as the company
prepared to release "The Interview," a comedy about a fictional plot to
assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The attack was followed by
online leaks of unreleased movies and emails that caused embarrassment
to executives and Hollywood personalities.
Comey urged the U.S. intelligence community to declassify information
that showed the hackers used such servers. Critics of the FBI and spy
agencies have accused the government of failing to back up assertions
that North Korea was responsible.
Comey said investigators still do not know how hackers got into Sony's
systems. But he said technical analysis of the malware used showed strong
similarities to malware developed by North Korea and used last year in
attacks on South Korean banks.
He said language used by Guardians of Peace also matches language used in
other hack attacks attributed to North Korea.
Comey said the FBI would deploy more cybersecurity experts to work in
the offices of its foreign partners in order to "shrink the world" the
way hackers have done.
U.S. officials familiar with investigations into the attack say while
U.S. agencies believe North Korea initiated it, they are also looking
into whether Pyongyang hired outside help.
One of the officials said investigators believe the North Koreans could
either have hired foreign hackers to help with the attack or got help
from disgruntled Sony insiders. They do not believe North Korea had help
from any other government.
Speaking before Comey at the cyber conference, James Clapper, the U.S.
Director of National Intelligence, said the Sony hack was the most
serious cyberattack ever targeting U.S. interests.
Clapper said cyberattacks offered the North Koreans "global recognition
at a low cost with no consequences."
He added that he had watched "The Interview" over the past weekend. "It's
very clear to me that the North Koreans don't have a sense of humor," he
said.
US Did Not 'Hack Back' Against North Korea
The U.S. government was not responsible for sustained electronic attacks
that crippled North Korea's Internet infrastructure last month, just
after President Barack Obama promised that his administration would
respond to the hacker break-in at Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., two
senior U.S. officials told The Associated Press.
The Obama administration has been deliberately coy about whether it
caused North Korea's outage, which affected all the nation's Internet
connections starting the weekend of Dec. 20. But the two officials,
speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to
openly discuss the issue, acknowledged to the AP that it was not a U.S.
operation.
It was not immediately clear even within the administration whether rogue
hackers or other governments disrupted North Korea's networks. The
networks are not considered especially robust since they rely on a single
provider, China United Network Communications Group Co. Ltd., the
state-owned provider in neighboring China. North Korea's service was
sporadic starting Saturday, Dec. 20, then collapsed entirely for nearly
10 hours two days later in what has remained an enduring whodunit.
"It looks more like the result of an infrastructure attack than an
infrastructure failure," said James Cowie, chief scientist at Dynamic
Network Services Inc. of Manchester, New Hampshire, who studied the
outages. "There's nothing you can point to that says it has all the
hallmarks of an attack by a nation state. It could have been anybody."
Within the U.S. government, contingents have debated privately whether
to acknowledge that the U.S. played no role in North Korea's disruptions
or remain silent to avoid detailed conversations about U.S. capabilities
and policy on offensive cyber operations, which are considered highly
classified.
The disclosure denying U.S. involvement was intended to convey how
seriously the administration considers offensive cyberattacks, intended
to be used only in the most serious cases and consistent with the State
Department's admonitions for foreign governments to always preserve
access to the Internet for all citizens, one of the officials said.
Sony Pictures chief executive Michael Lynton told the AP in a new
interview that he never knew whether the U.S. government electronically
attacked North Korea as retaliation for the break-in at his company.
The government hinted earlier this year, on Jan. 2, that it wasn't
involved in the North Korea outages, but its intended message was too
understated to be recognized as an outright denial. When the White House
announced new economic sanctions against North Korea for what it called
a "destructive and coercive cyberattack" against Sony, Obama spokesman
Josh Earnest described the sanctions as "the first aspect of our
response." In other words, the government was saying its initial
response was coming 11 days after the mysterious attacks crippled North
Korea's networks.
As late as Thursday, Obama's homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco,
declined to say whether the U.S. was behind the North Korea outages.
Speaking at a cybersecurity conference in New York, Monaco would not
answer a question from the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New
York, Preet Bharara, whether the administration was responsible and
agreed it could be helpful to be ambiguous about the consequences of
hacking American targets.
"I'm not going to comment, and I never would, on operational
capabilities," she said. "But you want to be able to have a number of
tools in your toolbox and reserve them for use."
FBI Assistant Director Joseph Demarest, head of the cyber division, added:
"You have to be able to reserve some ability for your capabilities, your
methods, in a way that protects that capability going forward."
At the time of the North Korea outages, the White House and the State
Department also declined to say whether the U.S. government was
responsible. North Korea's four principal connections to the Internet
began having serious problems just hours after Obama blamed North Korea
for hacking into Sony, which included disclosure of confidential company
emails and business files and threats of terror attacks against U.S.
movie theaters until Sony agreed to cancel the Christmas Day release of
its film "The Interview." Sony eventually decided to release the profane
comedy that pokes fun at North Korea leader Kim Jong Un and depicts an
assassination plot against him, offering it online for $6 and in a
relatively small number of theaters.
Obama promised Dec. 19 to retaliate against North Korea but pointedly did
not indicate what he had planned: "We will respond proportionally," he
said, "and we'll respond in a place and time and manner that we choose.
It's not something that I will announce here today at a press
conference." But Obama later described the Sony hacking as "an act of
cyber vandalism," not an act of war.
As North Korea's networks sputtered, on Dec. 22, State Department
spokeswoman Marie Harf wouldn't say whether U.S. fingerprints were
involved, but her answer was widely interpreted as confirming a U.S.
role: "As we implement our responses, some will be seen, some may not be
seen."
One day later, Harf clarified. "I don't think I actually winked or
nudged," she said. "I said I can't comment on those reports one way or
the other. I can't confirm them one way or the other. I don't actually
know that their Internet was out, and it's not for me to speak to. I was
broadly speaking about what the president has said but in no way was
trying to link it to yesterday's activity."
She added: "I understand it was sort of interpreted that way and did not
mean to be."
FCC Signals Intent On Net Neutrality Decision, Redefines Broadband
After months of hemming and hawing, Federal Communications Commission
Chairman Tom Wheeler indicated yesterday that he would advocate a net
neutrality policy compatible with President Obamas vision for treating
the Internet as a public utility and prohibit Internet service provider
practices such as blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization.
"Were both pulling in the same direction," Wheeler said in a public
interview at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
As recently as December, Wheeler appeared to be interested in a hybrid
approach designed to accommodate the demands of infrastructure technology
companies, which have vocally opposed the net neutrality framework Obama
outlined in November. In Obamas view, consumer broadband should fall
under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, which ensures that
utilities like electricity are open to all and devoid of fast lanes.
Yesterday Wheeler dismissed the lobbying efforts of companies such as
Cisco and IBM. "After the president said what he said about Title II,
we still had a record bidding for spectrum from ISPs [Internet Service
Providers] and continued announcements about new gigabit plants going
out," he told interviewer Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer
Electronics Association.
Wheeler will introduce the final language for his proposed policy on
February 5; FCC leaders will vote on the policy February 26.
In addition, Wheeler proposed changing the definition of broadband in
order to promote faster internet speeds. Under the new standards,
broadband, or "advanced telecommunications capability," in FCC parlance,
would be defined as 25Mbps downstream and 3Mbps upstreaman improvement
from its current definition of 4Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream.
The recommendation stems from the FCC concern that internet service
providers are failing to serve rural communities, which, in an
increasingly digital economy, would effectively leave them cut off from
trade and education.
According to the FCC, 55 million Americans lack access to broadband
service that would meet the proposed redefinition. Of those, 53 million
live in rural areas.
The FCC is required by Congress to determine whether broadband "is being
deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion." It last
updated its broadband standards in 2010.
Google Researcher Reveals Zero-Day Windows 8.1 Vulnerability
A Google security researcher, 'James Forshaw' has discovered a privilege
escalation vulnerability in Windows 8.1 that could allow a hacker to
modify contents or even to take over victims' computers completely,
leaving millions of users vulnerable.
The researcher also provided a Proof of Concept (PoC) program for the
vulnerability. Forshaw says that he has tested the PoC only on an updated
Windows 8.1 and that it is unclear whether earlier versions, specifically
Windows 7, are vulnerable.
Forshaw unearthed the bug in September 2014 and thereby notified on the
Google Security Research mailing list about the bug on 30th September.
Now, after 90 days disclosure deadline the vulnerability and Proof of
Concept program was made public on Wednesday.
The vulnerability resides in the function AhcVerifyAdminContext, an
internal function and not a public API which actually checks whether the
user is an administrator.
"This function has a vulnerability where it doesn't correctly check the
impersonation token of the caller to determine if the user is an
administrator," Forshaw wrote in the mailing list. "It reads the
caller's impersonation token using PsReferenceImpersonationToken and
then does a comparison between the user SID in the token to
LocalSystem's SID."
"It doesn't check the impersonation level of the token so it's possible
to get an identify token on your thread from a local system process and
bypass this check. For this purpose the PoC abuses the BITS service and
COM to get the impersonation token but there are probably other ways."
The PoC contains two program files and some set of instructions for
executing the files which, if successful, finally result in the Windows
calculator running as an Administrator. According to the researcher, the
vulnerability is not in Windows User Account Control (UAC) itself, but
UAC is used in part to demonstrate the bug.
Forshaw tested the PoC on Windows 8.1 update, both 32 bit and 64 bit
versions, and he recommended users to run the PoC on 32 bit. To verify
perform the following steps:
Put the AppCompatCache.exe and Testdll.dll on disk
Ensure that UAC is enabled, the current user is a split-token admin and
the UAC setting is the default (no prompt for specific executables).
Execute AppCompatCache from the command prompt with the command line
"AppCompatCache.exe c:\windows\system32\ComputerDefaults.exe testdll.dll".
If successful then the calculator should appear running as an
administrator. If it doesn't work first time (and you get the
ComputerDefaults program) re-run the exploit from 3, there seems to be a
caching/timing issue sometimes on first run.
A Microsoft spokesperson confirms the vulnerability and says that its
already working on a fix:
"We are working to release a security update to address an Elevation of
Privilege issue. It is important to note that for a would-be attacker to
potentially exploit a system, they would first need to have valid logon
credentials and be able to log on locally to a targeted machine. We
encourage customers to keep their anti-virus software up to date, install
all available Security Updates and enable the firewall on their
computer."
At the time of posting this article, there's no patch available and all
Windows 8.1 systems are vulnerable to hackers.
MIT Sites Defaced in Lead-up to Anniversary of Aaron Swartz's Death
The two year anniversary of the death of Aaron Swartz has been
commemorated with an attack on the institution from which he siphoned
documents.
Attackers going under the name of "Ulzr1z" defaced websites for courses
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The attackers edited the homepages of 15 sites, replacing it with the
text below, which has since been removed:
./ Hacked by Ulzr1z?Follow me @ulzr1z?#OpAaronSwartz?Hacked!
The attack affected MIT's Media Lab faculty, which hosts a number of
course websites under its domain.
The attackers gained access to the WordPress admin panel, which controls
all the websites, tweeting a screenshot to prove the access.
0x50776e6564 @ulzr1z ?Panel Admin Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
#MIT #Hacked Acces to all other subdomain
The 15 defaced subdomains, including sites for courses on subjects such as
Social Physics, were also posted on Pastebin.
This isn't the first time that MIT's suffered repercussions from the death
of the internet activist, whose work included establishing the online
gathering Demand Progress to campaign against the Stop Online Piracy Act
(SOPA); co-authoring the web feed format RSS; and many other projects
concerned with sociology, civic awareness and activism.
Two years ago, in 2013, attackers affiliating themselves with the
Anonymous brand took down the school's website to avenge Swartz's death.
The website was also hijacked to host a personal tribute to Aaron Swartz
that included tender comments from those who apparently knew the young
man, who was only 24 when he was arrested.
The 2013 message was appended with an apologetic note to MIT's web
administrators, acknowledging that Anonymous didn't directly blame MIT
for the tragedy.
MIT runs the network from which, back in 2011, Swartz had acquired a
trove of download-protected academic articles from the non-profit
academic journal archive JSTOR, with the aim of republishing them
without restriction.
Shortly following Swartz's suicide, legislation that would have at least
partly de-fanged the ferocity of the charges used against the internet
activist was proposed.
Beyond Representative Zoe Lofgren's so-called Aaron's Law - which, as of
August 2014, had been left to wither in a Congressional committee - the
charges against Swartz have been dubbed "ridiculous and trumped up" by
members of the House Judiciary Committee Representative.
Those Representatives have referred to Swartz as a "martyr" and, as of a
year ago, were tasking an Oversight panel to look into the
appropriateness of federal prosecutors' actions against him.
Unfortunately, Saturday's attack is similar to the ones launched
previously, in that the main people who'll suffer are the innocent
bystanders who use the defaced sites - in this case, students.
Watch out! Macro-based Malware Is Making A Comeback
For the past several months, different groups of attackers have
distributed malware through Microsoft Office documents that contain
malicious macros, reviving a technique that has been out of style for
over a decade.
Macros are scripts that contain commands for automating tasks in various
applications. Microsoft Office programs like Word and Excel support
macros written in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and these can be
used for malicious activities like installing malware.
To prevent abuse, starting with Office XP, released in 2001, users are
asked for permission before executing unsigned macros embedded in files,
this being the primary reason why attackers have stopped using macros in
favor of other malware distribution methods.
However, it seems that when coupled with social engineering the technique
can still be effective and some cybercriminal groups have recently
started to exploit that.
The Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC) has recently seen an
increasing number of threats using macros to spread their malicious
code, malware researchers from Microsoft said in a blog post last
Friday.
Two such threats that primarily target users in the U.S. and U.K. and
whose activity peaked in mid-December are called Adnel and Tarbir. Both
are distributed through macros embedded in .doc and .xls documents that
are delivered via spam emails and typically masquerade as receipts,
invoices, wire transfer confirmations, bills and shipping notices.
When opened, the documents provide victims with step-by-step instructions
on how to enable the untrusted macros to run, the Microsoft researchers
said. The combination of the instructional document, spam email with
supposed monetary content, and a seemingly relevant file name, can be
enough to convince an unsuspecting user to click the Enable Content
button.
Another malware program thats being distributed through macros is called
Dridex and targets online banking users. At their peak in November, the
Dridex-related spam campaigns distributed up to 15,000 documents with
malicious macros per day, according to researchers from security firm
Trustwave.
The documents posed as invoices from software companies, online
retailers, banking institutions and shipping companies and some of them
had instructions on how to enable the macros to run, the Trustwave
researchers said Tuesday via email.
Its not just cybercriminals who began using the macros technique again,
but also state-sponsored attackers. Researchers Gadi Evron and Tillmann
Werner recently presented their analysis of a cyberespionage operation
dubbed Rocket Kitten at the Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg. The
attackers targeted government and academic organizations in Israel and
Western Europe using spear-phishing emails that contained Excel files
with malicious macros. When run, the macros installed a sophisticated
backdoor.
Another cyberespionage campaign that used Word documents with malicious
macros was CosmicDuke, which was uncovered in September and targeted at
least one European Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Its heartwarming to see
how kind the attackers are: when you open the email attachment, the Word
document helps you enable macros by instructing you to click Enable
Content, researchers from F-Secure said Wednesday in a blog post
discussing connections between the CosmicDuke, MiniDuke and OnionDuke
malware programs.
Japanese Newspaper Makes Bold Claim About Mt Gox's Giant 2014 Bitcoin Loss
If you're a Bitcoin user, you'll know that 2014 was a bit of an annus
horribilis for the "freedom currency."
Bitcoins are effectively cryptographic puzzles that are claimed by the
first person to solve each one, and thereafter traded at a value agreed
between buyer and seller.
That makes them into a cash currency, more or less, but without any
central backing or, for that matter, regulation.
There's a good side to that: no government body can summarily devalue or
disown your Bitcoin stash.
That can, and has, happened with centrally managed currencies, as for
example in Zimbabwe in 2009.
Hyperinflation over a number of years rendered the Zimbabwe dollar so
worthless that the government eventually disowned it altogether, leaving
the economy to operate on other countries' money, notably the US dollar
and the South African Rand.
Effectively, the exchange rate against all other currencies officially
became zero, so that any Zimdollars you had were quite literally
worthless.
But no government, reserve bank or monetary authority can summarily wipe
out your Bitcoins.
Of course, there's a bad side to that: no regulator means that there are
no regulatory protections, and no operating requirements for companies
that offer to look after your Bitcoins for you.
In theory, you don't need to entrust your Bitcoin holdings to anyone
else, provided that you can find buyers who will accept them directly.
But that doesn't give you a whole lot of liquidity you might be
fiendishly rich in the Bitcoin world, yet unable to pay your rent, meet
the loan repayments on your car, or even buy a loaf of bread.
So Bitcoin exchanges sprung up to act as an interface between the world's
official currencies and the world of Bitcoin.
Loosely speaking, you give someone some Bitcoins, and they let you at an
agreed amount of regular money in return.
You might "deposit" BTC1, for example, and be given a balance of, say,
$320 (the approximate rate on 2014-01-02) to spend in more familiar ways,
or to transfer into a regular bank account.
In short, Bitcoin exchanges act much like banks, with deposits,
withdrawals, balances and transaction records.
Yet they aren't banks, any more than a retail store is a "bank" when it
issues you a credit note for goods you've returned.
After all, Bitcoin isn't really a currency, so, generally speaking, it's
not covered by any of the laws relating to currency trading, brokerage,
banking and so on.
In other words, if the company to which you entrusted your precious
Bitcoins suddenly tells you, "So sorry, they seem to have vanished,"
then, well, that's that: you're out of luck.
Indeed, the Bitcoin ecosystem has regularly suffered just that sort of
confidence-sapping announcement, though usually on a fairly modest scale,
at least in global terms.
Examples prior to 2014 include:
May 2012. An exchange called Bitcoinica allegedly had $225,000 stolen,
followed by another $90,000 later the same year.
September 2012. $250,000 was stolen from boutique exchange Bitfloor after
an encryption lapse during a server upgrade.
November 2013. Small exchanges in Australia, China and Denmark "vanished
along with the money" after claiming they'd heen hacked.
But in 2014, the Big Daddy of Bitcoin exchanges, Japan-based Mt. Gox, made
a "So sorry, they seem to have vanished" announcement about a whopping
650,000 Bitcoins, worth approximately $800 each at the time.
The mystery of the missing BTCs was at first blamed on a cryptographic
flaw in the Bitcoin protocol that Mt. Gox's coders hadn't defended against
properly something they really ought to have done, considering that they
were sitting on half-a-billion dollars worth of other people's assets.
But that story didn't wash with everyone, not least those who thought that
any abuse of the flaw concerned (it's euphemistically known as transaction
malleability if you would like to look it up) ought to have been visible,
albeit too late, in the transaction record.
? Greatly simplified, transaction malleability means that two transactions
can be rigged to have the same supposedly-unique identifier. Crooked
transactors can use a deliberately created duplicate-yet-different
transaction pair to trick naive exchanges into thinking that something has
gone wrong, and demand a refund. (Smart exchanges use additional checks to
help repudiate bogus transaction repudiations.)
Some people suspected Mt. Gox insiders of simply taking the missing
Bitcoins or some of them, anyway for themselves.
Ironically, the very sort of incautious attitude to coding that would make
a transaction malleability exploit possible would probably also make it
possible for rogue insiders to get away unnoticed with large-scale Bitcoin
larceny.
That's where the story sat throughout the second half of 2014: something
bad happened, but no-one quite knew whom to blame.
On New Year's Day, however, Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun dropped a
bit of a bombshell.
It openly stated that there was "strong suspicion" that most of the
missing Bitcoins were ripped off from inside.
Yomiuri Shimbun is claiming that the loss of about 7000BTC can be
explained by cyberattack in other words, crooks outside the company's
network were the perpetrators but that there is no evidence of
cyberattack around the loss of the remaining 643,000BTC.
In short, 99% of the crime was an inside job.
Is that really what happened, do you think?
If so, is there a chance, however slim, that some of the missing funds
might yet be recovered?
Zuckerberg: Facebook Will Protect Free Speech
In a show of solidarity with the victims of the attacks on French
satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, Mark Zuckerberg pledged that extremism
would not silence freedom of expression on Facebook.
In a post on his Facebook page, the co-founder and CEO of Facebook said
the giant social network would uphold freedom of expression even when
sharing content that some people might find offensive.
"I'm committed to building a service where you can speak freely without
fear of violence," Zuckerberg wrote.
He recalled how an extremist in Parkistan fought to have him "sentenced to
death" when Facebook refused to ban content about the Prophet Mohammed
that offended the extremist.
"We stood up for this because different voices even if they're sometimes
offensive can make the world a better and more interesting place,"
Zuckerberg wrote. "As I reflect on yesterday's attack and my own
experience with extremism, this is what we all need to reject a group of
extremists trying to silence the voices and opinions of everyone else
around the world."
He ended the post with the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie.
A few years ago, an extremist in Pakistan fought to have me sentenced to
death because Facebook refused to ban content about Mohammed that offended
him.
We stood up for this because different voices - even if they're sometimes
offensive - can make the world a better and more interesting place.
Facebook has always been a place where people across the world share
their views and ideas. We follow the laws in each country, but we never
let one country or group of people dictate what people can share across
the world.
Yet as I reflect on yesterday's attack and my own experience with
extremism, this is what we all need to reject - a group of extremists
trying to silence the voices and opinions of everyone else around the
world.
I won't let that happen on Facebook. I'm committed to building a service
where you can speak freely without fear of violence.
My thoughts are with the victims, their families, the people of France
and the people all over the world who choose to share their views and
ideas, even when that takes courage. ?#?JeSuisCharlie?
58% of American Adults Are on Facebook
Facebook remains the most popular social media site in the United States.
Fifty-eight percent of the entire adult population have an account, a
study released Friday found.
Looking only at adults who use the Internet - 81% of all Americans -
Facebook's numbers are much higher. Almost three-quarters of online
adults used Facebook, the survey by the Pew Research Center found.
Facebook has become the baseline, "one stop shop" for online interaction,
said Nicole Ellison, a professor of information science at the University
of Michigan who's been studying the social media site for the past
decade.
"If you look at any line in the post office and see what people are doing
on their phones, they're frequently on Facebook," said Ellison, who
helped design the Pew study.
"Facebook has become kind of a daily practice for many people," she said.
"It's the default social site."
While the percentage of people using Facebook hasn't increased since
2013, the amount of time they spend of the site has. Fully 70% of users
visit the site daily and 45% go several times a day, up from 63% who were
daily visitors last year.
Facebook's latest conquest is older Americans. This year for the first
time more than half of online adults over 65 were on Facebook56% of
them. That figure represents almost a third of all seniors nationwide.
They come on because their children encourage them. "Their children
might say 'Mom, did you see the photos of the kids I posted on
Facebook?' and that's when they get on," said Ellison.
Once there, seniors quickly find old friends, colleagues and school
mates. "That has its own set of benefits in terms of combatting
loneliness and creating social support," she said.
Despite Facebook's hegemony, Americans are also beginning to branch out.
While not giving up their social space on Facebook, they're
supplementing with second and third online hangouts, to reach other
specific groups or do other things.
"We found that 52% of online adults were using two or more social media
sites, compared to 42% the previous year - so 10% more had adopted
another social media platform," Ellison said.
Among all U.S. adults, 23% use LinkedIn, 22% Pinterest, 21% Instagram
and 19% Twitter, the survey found.
The photo-sharing platform Instagram skews younger. Fifty-three percent
of people between 18 and 29 have an Instagram account. Almost half (49%)
of all Instagrammers use the site daily.
Of Internet-using adults as a whole, 26% have an Instagram account.
Fifty percent of Internet users with college educations use LinkedIn, the
business-oriented social networking group. In the online population as a
whole, 28% have a LinkedIn account.
Pinterest, the hobby, craft and DIY site, is used predominantly by
women. Twenty-eight percent of Internet users have an account. But 42%
of American women who are online have an account while 13% of online
men do, the Pew survey found.
The survey was conducted in September of 2014 by Princeton Survey
Research Associates International for the Pew Research Center. It
interviewed 2,003 Internet-using adults nationwide.
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