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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 18 Issue 08
Volume 18, Issue 08 Atari Online News, Etc. February 26, 2016
Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2016
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 #1808 02/26/16
~ Teenage Hacker Arrested ~ People Are Talking! ~ 'Necropolis' Is Coming!
~ CMU Hacked Tor Users! ~ Linux Mint Site Hacked ~ Howard Scott Warshaw!
~ NSA Data Center Attacks ~ Facebook "Reactions"! ~ Dave Needle Passes Away
~ Google's Project Shield ~ Siri for Mac Is Coming ~ MouseJack Hack Risk!
-* Nathan Drake's Last Hurrah! *-
-* Zuckerberg, Dorsey Are Threatened! *-
-* Brit Intelligence Allowed To Hack Anyone! *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
In case you haven't been receiving your weekly issue of A-ONE via
our subscriber list, we apologize. I've learned that there have
been some server changes and moves, and now there are some problems
with the server itself. These issues are being dealt with, and
hopefully will be resolved quickly (if not already!). Meanwhile,
there are other routes to find the magazine. I know, if you don't
see these comments, how are you to know??!!
Anyway, the political world - at least our par of it - is taking
on new meanings. I found a quote today from Sen. Lindsey Graham
to be quite comical. According to the article: Sen. Lindsey Graham
is so disgusted with the GOP's embrace of Donald Trump, he says:
"My party has gone batshit crazy."
Apparently, Senator, many Americans are tired of "politics as
usual" and they are making their voices (and votes) heard.
Frankly, I'm surprised at how well Donald Trump is doing. Or,
is it more correct to say how poorly the other GOP candidates are
doing? And on the Democrats side, look how well Bernie Sanders
is doing? Looks like mainstream politics is facing a voter
revolution of sorts.
Here we are, the last week of February, and no snow on the ground!
After last winter, you won't hear any complaints from me about the
lack of snow! The weather has been crazy on the East Coast lately,
with all kinds of nasty weather in the South and mid-Atlantic, but
we've been pretty fortunate here in the Northeast. I hope that March
continues with this trend!
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - 'Uncharted 4' Creators Plot Nathan Drake's Last Hurrah!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Bandai Namco Brings 'Necropolis' to PS4, Xbox One!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
'Uncharted 4' Creators Plot Nathan Drake's Last Hurrah
The creators of "Uncharted 4" ó much like cliff-diving,
treasure-hunting series protagonist Nathan Drake ó aren't afraid
to take a few risks.
With the release of "Uncharted 4: A Thief's End" on April 26,
directors Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley are ending the
smart-alecky fortune hunter's story at the peak of the
franchise's popularity. Since the release of the original
"Uncharted: Drake's Fortune" in 2007, publisher Sony has sold
more than 21 million copies of the "Uncharted" series.
"It's time," said Druckmann during a recent visit to developer
Naughty Dog's offices. "Sometimes, a character just lets you
know it's time to move on. For me, that was part of the intrigue
of coming back to this world. You never see something successful
in the industry end. It usually just fizzles out."
After working on the first pair of "Uncharted" games and the
apocalyptic saga "The Last of Us," Druckmann and Straley were
brought onto "Uncharted 4" after "Uncharted 3" directors Amy
Hennig and Justin Richmond departed the studio. Druckmann said
the game's story changed "100 percent" when they took over the
project, the first new "Uncharted" installment for the
PlayStation 4.
"This is the biggest, most ambitious 'Uncharted' ó let alone game
ó that Naughty Dog has ever endeavored to take on," said Straley.
"We want to do this justice. We want it to be a mind-blowing,
eye-popping, sweaty-palms adventure. Everybody is bleeding out of
their eye sockets to make it come together. We want to make sure
Drake is sent off properly."
"Uncharted 4" finds Drake (played by Nolan North) retired from
his continent-hopping career until his thought-to-be-dead brother
Sam (Troy Baker) shows up seeking his help. Their reunion puts
Drake's relationship with journalist Elena Fisher (Emily Rose) in
jeopardy. ("If you're done lying to me, then you should stop lying
to yourself," she cautions him in the game's most recent trailer.)
For the developers, the introduction of Drake's long-lost brother
provided them with a unique storytelling opportunity.
"It's a way for us to get into Drake's past," said Druckmann.
"This is someone who knows things about Nathan Drake that no one
else knows. We're flashing back to when the two brothers were
young. They haven't seen each other for 15 years. It's a way for
us to lure Nate back into the world of adventure. As they go
further, we'll explore their differences."
The daring decree to conclude Drake's tale isn't the only bold
choice made by the Naughty Dog team. The creators also
controversially cast a white actress to portray a black villain
in "Uncharted 4."
On-screen, Drake's adversary Nadine Ross looks like a black South
African private military contractor. However, she's portrayed in
the real world with a vocal- and motion-capture performance by
Caucasian actress Laura Bailey, who worked with a dialect coach
on a South African accent and was cast before developers
finalized the character's look.
"The easy thing to do at that point to avoid any controversy
would've been to say, 'Let's make her white,'" said Druckmann.
"No one would've questioned it or knew there was another option.
Instead, we moved forward with the concept for this really strong
character of color that you don't see often in a game with this
person we already cast who was great in this role."
Druckmann said "it just felt right" when Bailey's performance and
the designers' visuals were merged together on-screen.
Conversely, Druckmann said they also cast a black actor to portray
a white character before his appearance was locked down, although
he declined to specify the actor or role.
"It probably won't be revealed until the game is out," he said.
The release of "Uncharted 4" will mark the end of a rollicking
journey that began over eight years ago when Druckmann and
Straley worked on the first "Uncharted" entry. As soon as
"Uncharted 4" is shipped, Druckmann has his own adventure
planned.
"I promised my daughter I would take her to Disneyland," he
said. "That's what I'm going to do."
'Dark Souls' Publisher Brings 'Necropolis' to PS4, Xbox One
Here's one to add to your video game watch list: Necropolis is a
stylish, hardcore dungeon-diving game from Harebrained Schemes,
the studio behind the magnificent cyberpunk title Shadowrun
Returns. It was originally due to hit PC and Mac on March 17th,
but now Dark Souls publisher Bandai Namco is involved and the
times, they are a-changing.
Necropolis is now due to hit PC, Mac, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One
in the summer, with Bandai handling the console publishing
duties. Harebrained Schemes is self-publishing the game on Steam.
"While we really hate to slip a release date, we know from
experience that doing a console release right adds a significant
amount of development work," Harebrained Schemes President Mitch
Gitelman says in a press release. "So we believe this is
absolutely the right decision, and that the additional time will
make for an even better Necropolis for consoles and for PC."
Necropolis is an action title where players have just one life
to defeat hordes of ghastly beasties in ever-changing,
procedurally generated dungeons. It features crafting and
four-player drop-in co-op, plus an art style that is both moody
and adorable at the same time. It looks like an effortlessly
cool game, which should make it perfect for the summer.
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE Gaming Online - Online Users Growl & Purr!
"""""""""""""""""""
Amiga Engineer, Atari Lynx Co-creator, Dave Needle, Passes Away
Dave Needle, an instrumental figure in the completion of the
Lorraine project, which resulted in the Amiga 1000, passed away
on Saturday, February 20.
Needle was one of the main engineers behind the Amiga's custom
chips, and later on went on to co-create the Atari Lynx - the
first handheld system to feature a color LCD screen - in the late
80s.
Needle was also the co-inventor of the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer
home console, a short-lived, but cutting edge system created by
himself, designer R.J. Mical, and EA founder Trip Hawkins.
News of Needle's death was posted on Facebook by the Atari
History Book team over the weekend, although no cause was
given.
The Man Who Made 'The Worst Video Game in History'
The video game of Steven Spielberg's ET is considered to be one of
the worst of all time and has even been blamed for triggering the
collapse of Atari. Howard Scott Warshaw, the gifted programmer who
made it, explains how it was rushed out in a matter of weeks - and
how he feels about those events in California now.
Spielberg was unimpressed.
"Couldn't you do something more like Pac-Man?" he asked.
It was July 1982 and Atari, then one of the world's most successful
tech companies, had just paid a reported $21m for the video game
rights to Spielberg's new blockbuster, ET the Extra-Terrestrial.
Howard Scott Warshaw was the programmer tasked with designing the
game.
"I was stunned," says Warshaw. "Here was Steven Spielberg, one of
my idols, suggesting that I knock off the game! My impulse was to
go, 'Well, gee, Steven, couldn't you make something more like The
Day The Earth Stood Still?'"
Warshaw's stock was high at Atari. The 24-year-old had just
finished the video game of Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Spielberg considered Warshaw a "certifiable genius" and 36 hours
earlier Warshaw had been hand-picked for their next
collaboration.
"It was a day that will live in infamy in my life forever," says
Warshaw. "I was sitting in my office and I get a call from the
Atari CEO. He said, 'Howard, we need the ET video game done. Can
you do it?'
"And I said, 'Absolutely, yes I can!'"
Games for the Atari 2600 were distributed on cartridges that took
weeks to manufacture. If ET was to be in the shops for Christmas,
Warshaw had a tight deadline.
"The CEO goes, 'We need it for 1 September.' That left five weeks
to do it! Normally it'd be six to eight months to do a game, not
five weeks.
"Then he said, 'Design the game and on Thursday morning, be at
the airport and there will be a Learjet waiting to take you to
see Spielberg.'
"I'm not sure exactly what I was full of but whatever it was, I
was overflowing with it."
Warshaw drew up his pitch to Spielberg, and travelled from the
Atari headquarters in Sunnyvale, California to Los Angeles. His
idea was an adventure game in which the player had to help ET
phone home by collecting components to make an inter-planetary
telephone. The player would have to dodge government agents and
scientists in order to complete the mission.
"I got down to Spielberg and I laid out the whole design," he
says. "I told him, 'I think it's really important that we do
something innovative. ET is a breakthrough movie and I think we
need a breakthrough game.'
"I talked him out of the idea of a Pac-Man knock-off. But the key
was to design a game that I could deliver in five weeks."
Atari needed ET to be a hit. In 1982 sales had reached a peak of
$2 billion but the company was losing market share to home
computers like the Commodore 64, which could do more than play
games.
"It was the hardest I've ever worked on anything in my life,"
says Warshaw, who was the game's sole programmer. "I started
working at the office but after a while I realised there was a
problem; I still have to go home to sleep and eat occasionally.
"So we had another development system installed in my house so
that I would never be more than two minutes away from working on
the code except when I was driving.
"There was a manager who was assigned to make sure I was eating
so that I'd be able to keep going.
"When it came to the end of the process, my reaction was, 'Wow,
I did it!'"
Atari ordered an initial run of four million copies and budgeted
a reported $5m on what would be, at the time, the biggest-ever
advertising campaign for a video game.
"ET needs help from his human friend - and that's you!" read the
magazine ad. Television commercials ran for weeks. Spielberg
himself appeared in a promotional video, whilst Warshaw was flown
to the London premiere of ET and given a seat in front of the
Princess of Wales.
"The bosses believed that as long as we put anything out the door
with ET's name on it would sell millions and millions," he says.
To begin with, the game was "right up there on the Billboard top
sellers" but word began to spread that there were serious
problems.
"It was a finished game but it certainly wasn't perfect," Warshaw
says. "There were too many opportunities where you could suddenly
wind up in an odd situation. That was too much for a lot of people
and caused them to put the game down."
Players complained that the ET character would inexplicably fall
into pits and get stuck. As one 10-year-old told The New York
Times: "It wasn't fun."
Atari soon realised that ET was not going home. In early December
1982 it announced "disappointing" sales for the year and the value
of its parent company Warner Communications plunged. The results
triggered steep drops in the value of other video game makers.
"After the Christmas season it was starting to come back from
retailers," says Warshaw. "It still sold nearly 1.5 million units,
but when you needed to sell four million, that's not good enough."
By the second quarter of 1983, Atari's parent company announced
losses of $310m.
"Things just started to unravel," says Warshaw. "It's awesome to
be credited with single-handedly bringing down a billion-dollar
industry with eight kilobytes of code. But the truth is a little
more complex."
Consumers were turning to the home computer and the market was
saturated with video games. In a bid to avoid collapse, prices -
and much of the workforce - were slashed. But it was futile and in
July 1984 Warner offloaded Atari for $240m.
"I took some time off to recover from the whole experience," says
Warshaw. "I went into real estate for a couple of years and hated
it.
"Eventually I went back to technology, returning to video games
as a manager and director, but it had lost the charm by then."
Creatively unfulfilled, Warshaw undertook projects in writing and
TV production.
"I knew I was done with the industry but I couldn't envision an
alternative. I became depressed."
Warshaw's solution was "to throw reason to the wind" and in 2008
he retrained as a psychotherapist.
"Maybe a part of me really wanted to compensate for all the trauma
and depression I created with the ET game," he says. "But in
reality it's something I always wanted to do."
Today Warshaw bills himself as The Silicon Valley Therapist,
"fluent in both English and nerd". Does he use his own story of
colossal failure with clients?
"Sometimes I do," he admits.
"But every therapist uses their own experience with their clients.
To me it's a very natural thing. Programmers and therapists are
all systems analysts. It's just that I've moved on to a much more
sophisticated hardware."
In April 2014 Warshaw was given his own chance to obtain closure
on the ET fiasco. A film company was making a documentary about a
legend that had persisted for 30 years - that in 1983 Atari had
buried truckloads of the unsold ET games in the New Mexico desert.
"I never believed it, I just thought it was absurd," says Warshaw.
The city of Alamogordo granted permission for a public excavation
to take place. Warshaw was invited to attend.
"When we arrived, there was a long, long line of fans from all
over the country who had travelled to see this," he says. "It was
an odd thing to sit there and literally watch your past being dug
up."
The excavation confirmed that Atari products were indeed buried
at the dump and Warshaw was filmed at the moment a battered and
crushed copy of ET was pulled from the ground.
"I became extremely emotional," he says. "This little game that
I had written in five weeks more than 30 years ago was still
generating excitement. I was full of gratitude.
"Is ET really the worst game of all time? Probably not. But the
story of the fall of the video game industry needed a face and
that was ET.
"I actually prefer it when people do identify it as the worst
game of all time because I also did Yars Revenge and that's
frequently identified as one of the best of all time. So between
the two, I have the greatest range of any designer in history!"
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
British Intelligence Is Legally Allowed to Hack Anyone
Hacking of computers, smartphones and networks in the United
Kingdom or abroad by the Government Communications Headquarters
(GCHQ) is LEGAL, the UK's Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT)
ruled.
So, the UK is giving clean chit to its intelligence agency to
spy on its people as well as people living abroad.
Now, how is that okay?
The British spying nerve center GCHQ has won a major court case
in defense of the agency's persistent hacking programs.
After revelations by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden about the
extent of spying by the US and the UK, Privacy International and
seven Internet Service Providers (ISPs) launched a legal
challenge against the GCHQ's hacking operations.
The case alleged that the British spying agency was breaking
European law and violating fundamental warrant protections by its
too intrusive and persistent surveillance actions.
Though GCHQ "neither confirm nor deny" the existence of such
operations, the case made headlines in December last year when
GCHQ admitted to its persistent hacking programs, "within and
outside the UK," for the first time during the case hearings.
However, a panel of five members of the IPT handed down the
judgment on Friday, ruling that the computer network exploitation
that may involve activating microphones and cameras on devices
remotely without the owner's knowledge is legal and does not
breach human rights.
According to the senior judges, GCHQ's hacking efforts had "raised
a number of serious questions," but a "proper balance" has been
struck between the privacy of individuals and the need of the
intelligence agency to investigate crimes.
Here's what the lengthy ruling [PDF] from the Investigatory
Powers Tribunal (IPT) reads:
"The use of computer network exploitation by GCHQ, now avowed,
has obviously raised a number of serious questions, which we have
done our best to resolve in this Judgment.
Plainly it again emphasises the requirement for a balance to
be drawn between the urgent need of the Intelligence Agencies to
safeguard the public and the protection of an individual's privacy
and/or freedom of expression."
The agency's hacking efforts had allowed the agents to tap into
almost any electronic equipment, including computers, servers,
routers, laptops, mobile phones and even Internet of Thing (IoT)
devices such as smart toys, smart TVs and more.
GCHQ also said it had:
Installed malware
Remotely turned ON cameras and microphone
Installed Keylogger that records every pressed key on a
keyboard
Tracked suspects' locations via GPS
Remotely stole documents from target devices
Privacy International, which brought the case, is, of course, very
disappointed with the ruling, and so are we. How could a country
decide spying people outside its country?
The group will be challenging the decision on the grounds that it
fragmented the European Convention on Human Rights when it comes
to spying people within but outside of the UK.
"This case exposed not only these secret practices but also
the undemocratic manner in which the Government sought to
backdate powers to do this under the radar," Scarlet Kim, legal
officer at London-based Privacy International said in a
statement.
"Just because the Government magically produces guidelines
for hacking should not legitimize this practice."
However, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, welcomed the
ruling, saying the ruling was fair and took into account invasive
actions that are necessary for the security of UK.
"Once again, the law and practice around our Security and
Intelligence Agenciesí capabilities and procedures have been
scrutinized by an independent body and been confirmed to be lawful
and proportionate," Hammond said.
So, once again the threat of terrorism saved the GCHQ's ass, as
the judgement says the capabilities operated by the agency lie
"at the very heart of the attempts of the State to safeguard the
citizen against terrorist attack."
Hackers Associated with ISIS Threaten Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey
The video comes as the two companies step up anti-terrorism
efforts.
A video made by a group of ISIS supporters threatens Facebook CEO
Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
The 25-minute video, made by an ISIS-affiliated hacker group
calling itself the Sons of the Caliphate Army, came in response
to recent efforts by the two tech companies to rid their
platforms of terrorists, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The video shows Zuckerberg and Dorseyís pictures engulfed in
flames and covered in bullet holes, though it never explicitly
threatens their lives. It also shows screenshots of ISIS fightersí
accounts on the platforms, as if to boast that the companiesí
attempts to shut down terrorist profiles arenít making headway.
At the end of the video, the Journal reports that the group writes
this: ìTo Mark and Jack, founders of Twitter and Facebook and to
their Crusader government. You announce daily that you suspended
many of your accounts, and to you we say: Is that all you can do?
You are not in our league.î
Earlier this month, Twitter announced it had deleted 125,000
accounts associated with the terrorist group in the previous six
months. And on Wednesday, Apple, Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, and
other tech teams gathered at the Department of Justice to discuss
strategies to combat ISIS rhetoric and recruiting online.
Dorsey was also threatened by the group in a video last year.
Judge Confirms Government Paid CMU Scientists To Hack Tor Users for FBI
Everything is now crystal clear:
The security researchers from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
were hired by the federal officials to discover a technique that
could help the FBI Unmask Tor users and Reveal their IP addresses
as part of a criminal investigation.
Yes, a federal judge in Washington has recently confirmed that
the computer scientists at CMU's Software Engineering Institute
(SEI) were indeed behind a hack of the TOR project in 2014,
according to court documents [PDF] filed Tuesday.
In November 2015, The Hacker News reported that Tor Project
Director Roger Dingledine accused the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) of paying the CMU, at least, $1 Million for
providing information that led to the criminal suspects
identification on the Dark Web.
After this news had broken, the FBI denied the claims, saying
"The allegation that we paid [CMU] $1 Million to hack into TOR is
inaccurate."
Meanwhile, the CMU also published a press release, saying the
university had been subpoenaed for the IP addresses it obtained
during its research.
The revelation came out as part of the ongoing case against Brian
Richard Farrell, an alleged Silk Road 2 lieutenant who was
arrested in January 2014. It has emerged that the federal
officials recruited a "university-based research institute" that
was running systems on the Tor network to help authorities uncover
the identity of Farrell.
Now, a recent filing in one of the affected criminal cases has
confirmed both the name of the "university-based research
institute" and the existence of a subpoena.
Some earlier allegations by the TOR project seem to be wrong. The
research was funded by the Department of Defense, which was later
subpoenaed by the FBI.
Here's what the Tuesday court order, by US District Judge Richard
Jones, filed in the case of Farrell reads:
"The record demonstrates that the defendant's IP address was
identified by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) of
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) when SEI was conducting research
on the Tor network which was funded by the Department of Defense
(DOD)."
"Farrell's IP address was observed when SEI was operating its
computers on the Tor network. This information was obtained by
law enforcement pursuant to a subpoena served on SEI-CMU."
Farrell is charged with conspiracy to distribute drugs like
cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine through the Silk Road 2.0
dark web marketplace.
Last summer, the DoD renewed a contract worth over $1.73 Billion
with the SEI, which according to CMU, is the only federally funded
research center that focus on "software-related security and
engineering issues."
Carnegie Mellon University's SEI came under suspicion for the TOR
hack due to the sudden cancellation of the talk from SEI
researchers Michael McCord and Alexander Volynkin on
de-anonymizing Tor users at Black Hat 2014 hacking conference.
More details on the matter are still unclear, but the judge
confirmed few facts about the TOR and stated that "Tor users
clearly lack a reasonable expectation of privacy in their IP
addresses while using the Tor network."
NSA Data Center Experiencing 300 Million Hacking Attempts Per Day
Utah State computer systems are experiencing a massive cyber
attack on up to 300 Million Hacking attempts per day due to
National Security Agencyís (NSA) data center in the state.
Yes, 300,000,000 hacking attempts in a day!
According to the statistical survey, it is evident that the
computer systems in the US State of Utah began to experience the
hacking attack a few years back, precisely, soon after the NSA
revelations by global surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden.
It is a less-known fact that the NSA has built its new data center
near the city of Bluffdale, Utah. However, a couple of years back,
when Snowden revealed the presence of the data center, the attacks
have constantly been going on.
The PRISM spying program by Big Brothers at NSA might have shifted
the attention of hackers for the retaliation against
mass-surveillance and flared up this heightened cyber attacks
against the spying agency.
According to Utah Commissioner of public safety, Keith Squires, as
quoted by KUTV:
"In 2010, my IT director was letting me know that the number of
attacks we were averaging a day was between 25,000 to 80,000. We
had peaks in the past year or so that were over 300,000,000 a day."
Additionally, advanced weapons systems at Hill Air Force Base and
other tech companies in Utah could also be the reason for this
fueling cyber attacks.
The Security officers had identified the sudden influx of IP
traffic traced into foreign IP ranges and said the incident would
be a model of a botnet attack.
The botnet network scans for the technical glitches in the
communication pathways to infect the system, as per its Command
and Control (C&C) instructions.
In an attempt to minimize the attacking vector, Utah Security
Officer had blocked the IP addresses from China, Russia, and
Indonesia.
In the majority of cases, hackers are trying to gain a single
access by many tactical ploys that could lead them to land into
the NSA mainframes.
The Big Brother is Watching youÖ!
Warning ó Linux Mint Website Hacked and ISOs Replaced
With Backdoored Operating System
Are you also the one who downloaded Linux Mint on February 20th?
You may have been Infected!
Linux Mint is one of the best and popular Linux distros available
today, but if you have downloaded and installed the operating
system recently you might have done so using a malicious ISO
image.
Here's why:
Last night, Some unknown hacker or group of hackers had managed to
hack into the Linux Mint website and replaced the download links
on the site that pointed to one of their servers offering a
malicious ISO images for the Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon Edition.
"Hackers made a modified Linux Mint ISO, with a backdoor in
it, and managed to hack our website to point to it," the head of
Linux Mint project Clement Lefebvre said in a surprising
announcement dated February 21, 2016.
Who are affected?
As far as the Linux Mint team knows, the issue only affects the
one edition, and that is Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon edition.
The situation happened last night, so the issue only impacts
people who downloaded the above-mentioned version of Linux Mint
on February 20th.
However, if you have downloaded the Cinnamon edition or release
before Saturday 20th, February, the issue does not affect you.
Even if you downloaded a different edition including Mint 17.3
Cinnamon via Torrent or direct HTTP link, this does not affect
you either.
What had Happened?
Hackers believed to have accessed the underlying server via the
team's WordPress blog and then got shell access to www-data.
From there, the hackers manipulated the Linux Mint download page
and pointed it to a malicious FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server
hosted in Bulgaria (IP: 5.104.175.212), the investigative team
discovered.
The infected Linux ISO images installed the complete OS with the
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) backdoor Tsunami, giving the attackers
access to the system via IRC servers.
Tsunami is a well-known Linux ELF trojan that is a simple IRC bot
used for launching Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.
However, the Linux Mint team managed to discover the hack,
cleaned up the links from their website quickly, announced the
data breach on their official blog, and then it appears that the
hackers compromised its download page again.
Knowing that it has failed to eliminate the exact point of entry
of hackers, the Linux Mint team took the entire linuxmint.com
domain offline to prevent the ISO images from spreading to its
users.
The Linux Mint official website is currently offline until the
team investigates the issue entirely. However, the hackers' motive
behind the hack is not clear yet.
"What we don't know is the motivation behind this attack. If
more efforts are made to attack our project and if the goal is to
hurt us, weíll get in touch with authorities and security firms
to confront the people behind this," Lefebvre added.
The hackers are selling the Linux Mint full website's database for
a just $85, which shows a sign of their lack of knowledge.
The hack seems to be a work of some script kiddies or an
inexperienced group as they opted to infect a top-shelf Linux
distro with a silly IRC bot that is considered to be outdated in
early 2010. Instead, they would have used more dangerous malware
like Banking Trojans.
Also, even after the hack was initially discovered, the hackers
re-compromised the site, which again shows the hackers' lack of
experience.
Here's How to Protect your Linux Machine
Users with the ISO image can check its signature in an effort to
make sure it is valid.
To check for an infected download, you can compare the MD5
signature with the official versions, included in Lefebvre's blog
post.
If found infected, users are advised to follow these steps:
Take the computer offline.
Backup all your personal data.
Reinstall the operating system (with a clean ISO) or format
the partition.
Change passwords for sensitive websites and emails.
Hackers Can Break Into Your Computer Through Your Wireless Mouse
It turns out that even something as seemingly benign as your mouse
can put your personal information at risk. Thatís according to a
report by security firm Bastille, which says that hackers could in
theory take control of your computer through its wireless
peripherals.
The hack, which the company calls MouseJack, affects nearly every
wireless mouse and keyboard on the market and could give a hacker
complete access to your personal computer or to the network at
your office.
The hack isnít exactly sophisticated either. According to
Bastille, all a would-be hacker needs is about $15 worth of
computer hardware, which he could then use to send commands from
his computer to yours.
The hack works because while your wireless keyboard sends
information in encrypted form to your computerís wireless dongle
(so hackers canít see what youíre typing), your mouse doesnít.
As a result, hackers can send signals designed to perform keyboard
commands to your dongle. Those signals can then be used to hijack
your system.
ìWireless mice and keyboards are the most common accessories for
PCs today, and we have found a way to take over billions of them,î
said Marc Newlin, Bastilleís engineer responsible for the MouseJack
discovery, in a statement.
So how to protect yourself? Well, some wireless mouse and keyboard
manufacturers developed their devices so they can be patched via
firmware updates. Other companiesí offerings, however, canít be
updated and will simply have to be replaced.
Fortunately, Bastille has published a list of the impacted
hardware, as well as information about how some peripherals
companies have responded to the hack.
Police Arrest 16-year-old Boy Who Hacked CIA Director
The teenage hacker, who calls himself a member of hacktivist group
"Cracka with Attitude," behind the series of hacks on the United
States government and its high-level officials, including CIA
director, might have finally got arrested.
In a joint effort, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and
British police reportedly have arrested a 16-year-old British
teenager who they believe had allegedly:
Leaked the personal details of tens of thousands of FBI agents
and US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees.
Hacked into the AOL emails of CIA director John Brennan.
Hacked into the personal email and phone accounts of the US
spy chief James Clapper.
Broke into the AOL emails of the FBI Deputy Director Mark
Giuliano.
Federal officials haven't yet released the identity of the
arrested teenager, but the boy is suspected of being the lead
hacker of Cracka With Attitude, who calls himself Cracka, the
South East Regional Organised Crime Unit (SEROCU) told the Daily
Dot.
According to the report, Cracka is the same teenage hacker who
recently leaked the personal information of 31,000 government
agents belonging to nearly 20,000 FBI agents, 9,000 Department
of Homeland Security (DHS) officers and some number of DoJ
staffers.
In a statement, the SEROCU confirmed that the unit had arrested a
teenager on Tuesday in the East Midlands on suspicion of:
Conspiracy to commit unauthorised access to computer material
contrary to Section 1 Computer Misuse Act 1990.
Conspiracy to commit unauthorised access with intent to commit
further offences contrary to Section 2 Computer Misuse Act 1990.
Conspiracy to commit unauthorised acts with intent to impair
or with recklessness as to the impairing operation of a computer
contrary to Section 3 Computer Misuse Act 1990.
The unit declined to provide any further information on the
arrest, but while speaking to Motherboard, the arrested teenager
denied being Cracka, saying "I am not who you think I am ;) ;) ;)"
"I am innocent until proven guilty so I have nothing to be
worried about," the teen said. "They are trying to ruin my life."
Neither the Department of Justice (DoJ) nor the FBI have yet
responded to comment on it.
Google Wants To Save News Sites From Cyberattacks ó For Free
Mehdi Yahyanejad thought that after Iranians voted on June 12,
2009, he would finally get some rest. Yahyanejad, the
editor-in-chief of the social news and citizen journalism site
Balatarian.com, had been working around the clock to cover the
election. So when hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shocked
the country by defeating reformer Mir Hussein Moussavi in a
suspiciously large landslide, sending protestors flooding into the
streets, the 33-year-old Iranian immigrant was on vacation in Big
Sur, California. Instead of enjoying his summer holiday,
Yahyanejad spent the next week locked in front of a computer,
fighting to keep his site from getting crushed by a crippling
cyberattack.
That digital bombardment, seemingly launched by the Iranian
government to keep his site down during a critical political
moment, was only the first of many. For years, every time there
was new protest, the site got hit with a so-called ìdistributed
denial of serviceî attack that flooded it with junk traffic to
overwhelm its serversóoften preventing foreign media from
accessing the photos and video of the unrest that Iranians posted
on the site. Balatarinís staff blocked thousands of IP addresses
a day and even brought in a Dutch cybersecurity consultant, to no
avail. During an attack, ìany server we launched got shut down in
a matter of minutes,î Yahyanejad remembers. ìIt was a pretty
awful experience.î
Then in May of 2013, one of Yahyanejadís contacts at Google
suggested he sign up for a free trial of the companyís Page Speed
service, which caches websites on Google servers to give them
faster loadtimes. He did, and the result was immediate. Suddenly,
Balatarin was backed by Googleís immense infrastructure. Its
servers absorbed or filtered out the DDOS attacks, and Balatarin
stayed online. ìIt was a very sudden transformation,î Yahyanejad
says. ìWe stopped worrying on those days of protest.î
Google had quietly adopted Balatarin into an early pilot of a
service called Project Shield. That service, designed to stop DDOS
attacks from being used as a censorship tool, currently protects
close to a hundred similar sites focused on human rights, election
monitoring and independent political news. And now itís finally
coming out of its invite-only beta phase to offer its free
cyberattack protection to not just the most at-risk sites on the
Internet, but to virtually any news site that requests it.
Today Google Ideas, recently renamed Jigsaw, is opening Project
Shield to applications from any ìindependentî news siteóin other
words, one thatís not owned by a government or political party.
Large corporate news sites are also eligible, but Project Shield
team lead George Conard says the initiativeís real target is
small, under-resourced news sites that are vulnerable to the webís
growing epidemic of DDOS attacks. ìJust about anyone whoís
published anything interesting has come under an attack at some
point,î says Conard. ìThe smaller and more independent voices
often donít have the resources, whether technical or financial, to
really put good protections in placeÖThatís where we come into the
picture.î
Any site that signs up for Project Shield can make a change to
their domain name configuration that redirects visitors to a Google
server. That server acts as a so-called ìreverse proxyî ó an
intermediate server owned by Google designed to filter out
malicious traffic and cache some elements of the site to lighten
the load on the websiteís own computers. (Conard was hesitant to
describe any details of the serviceís filtering, to avoid giving
tips to potential DDOS attackers.)
And what does Google, and its parent company Alphabet, get out of
serving up its infrastructure resourcesófor freeóto thousands of
sites? Project Shield falls under Jigsawís mission, as Alphabet
executive director Eric Schmidt wrote last week, ìto use
technology to tackle the toughest geopolitical challenges.î Among
Alphabetís collection of subsidiary organizations with a
less-than-direct focus on profits, in other words, Jigsaw may be
the least profit-focused of all.
ìThis isnít about revenue,î says Jigsaw president Jared Cohen, a
former staffer at the U.S. State Department who helped lead the
agencyís Internet freedom campaigns during the Arab Spring. He
points to Googleís larger mission statement, saying, ìWhen we talk
about organizing the worldís information and making it available
and usefulÖyou have to make sure that once people have access to
the information, it doesnít get DDOS attacked, it doesnít get
compromised, it doesnít get censored in a politically motivated
way.î
Preventing DDOS attacks, Jigsaw engineers and execs argue, is good
for the Internet. And whatís good for the internet, they say, is
good for Google. ìWe just donít think that DDOS attacks should
exist,î Cohen says. ìWe hope that Shield can do for DDOS attacks
what Gmail did for spam.î
Why News Sites Specifically?
For nearly a decade, DDOS attacks have been used as a form of
ìjust-in-timeî political censorship, as some Internet freedom
analysts have called it. This is when, instead of blocking a site
with a Chinese-style Great Firewall, governments or
government-sponsored hackers will knock it offline at a crucial
moment, like a protest or an election. And DDOS attacks have only
become a more powerful and accessible method of censorship in
recent years: DDOS-tracking firm Arbor Networks has found that
attacks now routinely top 100 gigabits a second, compared with
peak attacks of 50 gigabits a second in 2009.
That growing threat to the web led Google to launch Project Shield
in 2013, and now to expand it to encompass any willing news site.
Google chose to offer Project Shield specifically to news
organizations because in many cases those groups depend entirely
on their web presence to get information to the public, says early
Project Shield product manager C.J. Adams. Project Shield is also
open to human rights and election monitoring sites by invitation,
but Adams differentiates those categories of Shield users from
news sites in that theyíre able continue their work even if their
sites go offline.
ìNewsî is also a broader and more easily defined category of
sites than those others, Adams explains; Jigsaw will open Project
Shield to news sites defined as those that would appear in Google
News ó in other words, those with journalistic standards and
attribution of reported facts. Individual bloggers and citizen
journalism sites are welcome to apply, Jigsaw staffers say, but
will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Theyíre careful to note, however, that the political slant or
opinions of the site wonít be used to discriminate who receives
Shieldís help. ìWeíll protect people on all sides of a political
dialogue,î says Conard. ìOne of the important things about keeping
these voices alive is that you shouldnít be able to silence one
point of view just by launching an attack.î
Even this seemingly benevolent move by Google is sure to raise the
eyebrows of the companyís privacy critics, since involvement in
Project Shield requires giving Google access to data about who
visits a news site. But Jigsaw promises that the raw logs it
collects from its reverse proxy service will be kept for a
maximum of two weeks and then stored only in aggregate form to
learn more about DDOS attack patterns. And it commits not to use
any data it collects from Project Shield for advertising purposes.
ìThis comes up: Whatís the catch? Whatís in this for Google?î says
Adams. ìWeíve made it very explicit we donít have the rights to
commercialize anything that comes through.î
Instead, Jigsaw argues that keeping news sites safe from DDOS
attacks fits into Googleís central purpose: to not just lead
searchers to information, but to make sure itís online when they
reach it. ìIs it worth it for us to spend the money and the
bandwidth capacity to protect the worldís news sites from getting
DDOS attacked if thatís something they want?î Cohen asks. ìThe
answer for us is an obvious yes.î
"Wow": Facebook Launches "Reactions" Worldwide
Facebook users around the globe can now do more than "like" a
post. They can love it, laugh at it or feel angered by it.
The social network rolled out "Reactions" - an extension of the
"Like" button - worldwide on Wednesday, to allow users to express
sadness, wow, anger, love and laughter.
In a video accompanying a blog post, the five new buttons appear
as animated emoticons that pop up when the "Like" button is held
down on mobile devices. The buttons appear on desktops when users
hover over the "Like" button.
Facebook launched a pilot of "Reactions" - which allowed users to
select from seven emotions including "Angry", "Sad", "Wow" and
"Like" - in Ireland and Spain in October.
The "Yay" emoticon, which was present in the pilot launch
(http://on.fb.me/1LBnXIG), was not seen in Wednesday's video
(http://bit.ly/24oZ6yi).
"People wanted to express empathy and make it comfortable to share
a wider range of emotions," Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page.
Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in September the
company was thinking of adding a "dislike" button, which
spearheaded a debate over whether it would increase cyber bullying
and negativity on the site. In October, the company said it would
expand its signature "Like" button with various reactions.
The slow test and rollout of the expanded button - which
Zuckerberg has said is the company's biggest design change to date
- is a marked change from Zuckerberg's famous mantra, "move fast
and break things."
The company said it will also use "Reactions" to track user
behavior and for ad delivery.
"We will initially use any Reaction similar to a Like to infer
that you want to see more of that type of content," Facebook said
in a separate blog post.(http://bit.ly/1TFzfOC)
The feature received mixed reviews from users on social
networking sites.
Many complained that they could not see the new emoticons, while
some were unhappy that Facebook did not launch a "dislike" button.
Marina Cupo wrote on Facebook: "I would rather have had a DISLIKE
button and then attach an emotion instead if I want!"
Users have often responded negatively to similar changes on other
sites. Twitter, for example, replaced its star-shaped "favorite"
icon with a heart-shaped icon called "like" in November. Users
initially scorned the change, but Twitter later said it increased
activity on the site.
Siri for Mac Reportedly Coming This Fall, at Long Last
Apple put Siri, its voice-activated personal assistant, in the
iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Apple TV, but not the Mac. I
assumed the company realized that people talking to their computers
would be rage-inducing to those around them, but OS X has had
dictation features for a while, and Apple has actually been testing
Siri on the Mac for the last four years.
The feature is almost ready to go, 9to5Mac reported on Wednesday,
and will be announced at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference
as part of OS X 10.12 in June. The next version of the Mac
operating system is likely to get a public release this fall.
So how will Siri on the Mac work? Kind of like Spotlight search,
in that a Siri icon will sit in your menu bar until you need to use
it. Click it, and a transparent overlay will pop up in the top
right of your screen with the same colorful waves you see on your
iPhone screen, which indicates that Siri can hear you speaking. If
your Mac is plugged in, youíll be able to say ìHey, Siriî and get
a response without clicking.
Itís unclear exactly why Apple waited so long to bring Siri to
OS X, but according to 9to5Mac, the company may not have had a
good idea of what it would be useful for (Iím still skeptical, to
be honest), or what the interface should look like. Those
problems have reportedly been resolved.
Why this matters: Some have been waiting for years ó since
Mountain Lion ó for Apple to put Siri in OS X. I donít get the
appeal, but Iím open to the idea if Siri proves to be incredibly
useful on the Mac.
=~=~=~=
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