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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 18 Issue 38
Volume 18, Issue 38 Atari Online News, Etc. September 23, 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 #1838 09/23/16
~ More Clinton Mail Drama ~ People Are Talking! ~ ACLU and Snowden!
~ FCC Republicans Refusal ~ Super Pitfall Improved ~ Frogger Released!
~ Sega Gets Technosoft! ~ Israeli Pentagon DDoS ~ EU: Free Wi-Fi?
~ KrebsOnSecurity Silence ~ FBI Faking Hacks Is OK ~ New Twitter Rules
-* Atari's Lunar Battle Mobile! *-
-* Blizzard Kills The Battle.net Brand *-
-* Yahoo Says Hack & Data Theft Was in 2014! *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Summer is over, officially! The one thing that I will not miss from
this past summer is the temperatures! There were almost 30 days in
which the temperature reached at least 90 degrees in my area. And
to make matters worse, we had very little rain. In fact, this was
a record-setting summer for the least amount of rain! I'm hoping
that fall-like weather continues beyond this weekend!
There's enough "bad" news happening around the counry lately; I'm
not going to comment because I'm sure that you've all probably been
blitzed with it already. The only remark that I'll make is that
these events are disheartening. Even the tit-for-tat Trump and
Clinton comedic campaigns can't seem to bring many smiles these
days! So, let's just move right along!
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
Frogger - Released! STFM/E/TT030/Falcon
Frogger has been unleashed to the world.. get your copy here...
http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-st-frogger_30782.html
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those people
that have helped me over the last 6 months... You know who you
are ;)
Sys Reqs
----------
1Mb STF/E TT030 / Falcon
Colour TV or RGB Mode
Jagpad / Keyboard / Joystick
Enjoy this game and let me get back to writing a new one :)
Some notes:
Read the instructions ;)
Although Frogger has been tested on the Falcon and TT and does
indeed run, there may be graphical errors as the only access I
have is Hatari (The latest Stable vers).
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - Rise of Iron, A Tribute to Destiny!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Blizzard Kills Battle.net Brand!
Sega Acquires Technosoft!
And much more!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Rise of Iron Is A Heartfelt Tribute to The Last Two Years of Destiny
ìRise of Ironî is Destinyís fourth major expansion, and it plans
for the gameís future with new weapons, armor, missions, and
multiplayer modes. Itís as good an excuse as ìThe Taken Kingî
was to jump back into developer Bungieís world: the loot is
plentiful, the levels are easy to come by, and the sheer number
of activities now available to players means the experience of
upgrading your characters requires far less repetitive grind than
it used to.
But thatís not why Iíd recommend lapsed Destiny players play
ìRise of Iron.î If, like me, youíve been playing Destiny
off-and-on for more than two years, you should get Bungieís $30
DLC for one mission ó a mission that made me take my finger off
the trigger for once, and actually look at the virtual world Iíd
lived in for 643 hours of my life.
The missionís called ìWe Found a Rifle,î and (spoilers) it
rewards players with an exotic Khvostov 7G-0X ó a fancified
version of the very first gun players find in the game. On paper,
the mission itself is an almost comedic distillation of Destinyís
basic loop: use a gun to kill lots of baddies so you can get a
better gun with which to kill more baddies faster. But in
context, itís Bungieís tribute, both to the gun itself ó the only
real way to express yourself in Destinyís world is through
violence, and in that regard, the Khvostov was every Destiny
playerís first word ó and to the people who have spent hours,
days, and weeks of their time in the game.
Destiny has made me satisfied, frustrated, excited, and bored
over the years Iíve played it, but I felt a new emotion through
this quest ó wistful. As I punched a four-eyed, four-armed vandal
in the face so hard he turned purple and disappeared, I thought
about how far Destiny had come in two years. As I hurled ethereal
flaming hammers at a hovering metal eyeball, I thought about how
far I had come in two years.
Itís often difficult to quantify your real-world existence on
this Earth, but by putting me back in Destinyís very first area
with its very first gun, ìRise of Ironî cast it in stark terms:
here was 26 months of my life measured in murdering video game
monsters. I remembered waking up at ungodly hours to play
acquaintances an ocean away, and mindlessly slaughtering dumb
drones as an excuse to talk to an old friend. I could chart
highs and lows in two years of my life by who I was killing
that week.
My reflective mood was shared by Ghost: the little hovering
robot thatís been my constant companion in Destinyís world. The
gameís objectives are usually calls to action ó go here, hack
that, kill them ó but the Khvostov missionís last request was
simply to enjoy the view with Ghost.
ìWhen you think about everything we've seen, everything we've
done,î the little robot said. ìI'll always remember our first day
together.î I realized then, that after so much time spent with
Destiny, that Iíll always remember it, too.
The Khvostov mission isnít the only time ìRise of Ironî gets
caught in a reflective mood. The Plaguelands ó the expansionís new
patrol area ó encompasses half of the Earth patrol area available
at the gameís launch. The familiar regions of the Rocketyard and
the Divide have been tweaked, sliced, and scarred by nanobots
belonging to new big bad SIVA, but theyíre still recognizable
under a few extra feet of snow. I thought Iíd feel short-changed
by this, given how many hours Iíve spent on Destinyís Earth
searching for spinmetal clusters, but the Plaguelands are still
an intriguing treat: weirder than Venus, more bustling than Mars,
and bigger than Oryxís Dreadnaught.
The story, too, is self-reflexive, but to its detriment. The
short story missions in ìRise of Ironî rely on players caring
about Destinyís version of ancient history: a group of
proto-Guardians known as the Iron Lords who were killed
generations before. I was getting misty-eyed at Ghostís request
to take a moment together, but even I couldnít muster up much
enthusiasm for the few missions on offer.
Destiny has been criticized for its flimsy plotline, the line
ìI donít have time to explain why I donít have time to explainî
quoted as evidence of its wishy-washy sci-fi justification for
shooting a lot of future guns. But ìRise of Ironî goes too far
the other way. Quest gatekeeper Lord Saladin is over-earnest,
humorless, and stiffed with lines that even hermit-living
superhumans wouldnít say. After ìThe Taken Kingî injected some
much-needed levity into the plot, Saladin draws it straight back
out, and his attempts to maintain a sense of mystery fail a few
missions in. Even the threat is underwhelming: SIVAís rogue
nanobots have the potential to pull people apart at a molecular
level, but Earthís greatest minds are happy sending one taciturn
Guardian and a really old dude in a furry collar to contain the
threat.
But itís not those story missions that form the bulk of ìRise of
Iron.î New three-player strike missions, multiplayer modes, and
the Archonís Forge ó a public event space that pits players
against waves of enemies ó are designed to be endlessly
replayable. For existing players, ìRise of Ironî hides weeksí
worth of new missions, modes, and minor additions behind its
weak story, as well as the promise of a new six-player raid
coming this weekend. New Destiny players are getting even more
of a deal.
At launch Destiny was a surprisingly slim package, but that
problemís now been turned on its head. For new players, the game
and its four expansions ó ìThe Dark Below,î ìHouse of Wolves,î
ìThe Taken King,î and now ìRise of Ironî ó are a daunting
prospect. Destiny presents a solar system of game worlds filled
with repeatable missions, events, patrols, strikes, dailies,
heroics, raids, and other inscrutable options, like endless
stars in the night sky. Itís hard to tell Court of Oryx apart
from the Archonís Forge, Prison of Elders from the Challenge of
Elders, and the Vault of Glass raid from the Wrath of the
Machine, but half of these activities spit out loot thatís long
obsolete.
But where previous Destiny expansions jettisoned what has come
before, with wholesale tweaks to leveling, gear, and weapons,
ìRise of Ironî builds on the sensible system introduced in ìThe
Taken King.î Lapsed players can infuse armor and guns they
particularly like, bringing treasured memories from Destinyís
second year into its third, and the gameís many vendors are
happily handing over weapons that came to earn their own
histories in the gameís healthy community. I cheered out loud,
for example, when I unpacked a brand-new Y-09 Longbow Synthesis
last night with hidden hand and an ambush scope ó a set of words
that mean nothing to normal people but will send a flicker of a
smile across a Destiny playerís face.
Almost every part of ìRise of Ironî combines old and new
Destiny, from its weapons, to its leveling system, to its new
patrol area. Two of its new strikes are even rehashes of the very
first missions available to players, replacing some of the
best-known bosses in the game with retooled, SIVA-infused
versions of themselves. For the unsentimental, the casual fan,
and the new player, thatís not so important. If thatís you, know
that with the full Destiny collection youíll be getting a vast
chunk of game for your $60, and know that you could also lose
days, weeks, and months in its confines.
But for existing players, people for whom Destiny is already a
hobby, people who get mild goosebumps when a video game robot
tells you to take a moment, ìRise of Ironî is something special.
Itís a map for the future of Destiny, but itís also a wink and a
nod at its past ó a chance for people who shared the route along
the way to look back at where theyíve come from.
Blizzard Kills The Classic Battle.net Brand After 20 Years
Blizzard is killing Battle.net just a few months shy of the
online gaming serviceís 20th birthday ó killing the name,
anyway. No, Overwatch and Hearthstone arenít going permanently
offline or anything, youíll just be calling the service that
hosts and updates your Blizzard games something else from now
on.
In a post on its official forums, Blizzard announced that it is
ìtransitioning away from using the Battle.net name for our gaming
service and the functionality connected to it.î Instead, itíll
use the considerably more boring convention where it just puts
the name Blizzard in front of things, like Blizzard Streaming
and Blizzard Voice. So presumably Battle.net will be Blizzard
Gaming? Blizzard Launcher?
The reasoning is that back in 1996, when Battle.net was
established (for the original Diablo ó good times) it was
necessary to make it clear that this was a new and distinct
online service. But over the years, ìconfusion and
inefficienciesî apparently resulted from having a separate name
for the service, and multiplayer is just an ordinary part of
games these days, not something that requires separate branding.
Kind of true, but I still think this is a bad idea. Battle.net
is an established and respected brand, known by gamers young and
old. Itís synonymous with online matchmaking and gaming ó I mean,
itís right there in the name! Throwing away years of history like
that is generally a bad idea, even when there are benefits to be
had ó and I donít really see any benefits here. What if Steam was
renamed Valve Store? Everyone would know Valve is behind it,
sure, but you lose a household name in the process.
Well, thereís no arguing with it. Blizzard has clearly made its
decision and weíre all going to have to call Battle.net
something else soon.
We had some good times, Battle.net. RIP.
Sega Acquires Technosoft Franchises,
Slowly Becoming Another Electronic Arts
Sega is a company that fans REALLY want to love and support but
that love and support is more often than not met with lackluster
Sonic the Hedgehog games. This bothers a lot of the gaming
populace that remember Sega of old. The Sega that released Comix
Zone, Streets of Rage 1, 2 and 3 on Sega Genesis, Shining the Holy
Ark on Saturn, released the Dreamcast and more. For a lot of us
it is apparent that that Sega is gone. Then they do things like
acquiring the Technosoft library of games. If you are a retro
gamer of any caliber then you know who Technosoft is. For the
rest of you reading this, read on and prepare for a short history
lesson.
Back in the day, Technosoft were one of THE developers of Sega
Genesis games that every gamer had to have in their collection.
That is 100% true for their Thunder Force series of scrolling
shooters. Thunder Force III and IV are arguably two of the best
examples of the genre (TFIII was ported to SNES as Thunder
Spirits - directly compared in our first issue). Technosoft was
more than just the developer behind the Thunder Force series of
games. They have also released Herzog Zwei and Elemental Master
both also on the Sega Genesis console.
Technosoftís Thunder Force III was just announced to be coming
to the Sega 3D Archives release. This is great news which
hopefully means we will see Thunder Force IV, V and VI get HD
remakes at some point (Thunder Force V was pretty awesome though
IV is still my favorite).
Interestingly it is already confirmed that Sega is planning on
re-releasing Thunder Force IV and V and Herzog Zwei at some point
- platforms unknown at this time. Considering these were 16 and
32-Bit titles it could be just about any platform from the 3DS up
to the Playstation 4 and Xbox One they are eyeing for these
titles to hit. I am fine with that. Especially if they do
remakes of some kind.
Atariís Lunar Battle, A New City-Builder
and Space Shooter Coming to Mobile
Atari, one of the worldís most recognized publishers and
producers of interactive entertainment, today announced the
development of Lunar Battle, a city-builder and space shooter
coming soon to the App Store for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch as
well as on Google Play for Android devices in fall 2016. An
original title, Lunar Battle crash lands players into an epic
deep space adventure to explore uncharted terrain and conquer
the skies. The free-to-play game incorporates arcade-style
combat elements originally popularized in classic Atari space
shooters such as Asteroids and Star Raiders into a base-building
experience for mobile.
Beginning today, Lunar Battle has soft launched on the App Store
and Google Play in Canada, Netherlands and Israel for a limited
time before releasing worldwide.
Players will join the action as part of a brave crew of
intergalactic explorers that crash-landed on a mysterious,
inhospitable planet deep in space. Gathering resources and
building infrastructure will be essential to ensuring the
explorers can survive the desolate terrain and thrive into a
growing populace. Protect the expanding base by taking to the
skies to combat against AI and real-life opponents as part of
the multiplayer experience. Become the ultimate ruler of the
universe in Lunar Battle by mastering key gameplay features,
including:
Build a Base ñ Create a thriving planetary colony by building
all the essentials a space community needs ñ power, food, water,
tech, beer and more. Customize building layouts to create the
ultimate personalized galactic refuge.
Explore the Planet and Harvest Resources ñ Unearth precious
resources including space ores, ship parts and energy sources.
Use the materials to keep the population growing and colony
thriving.
Take Flight and Fight ñ Participate in PVE and PVP dogfights
as part of the thrilling arcade space shooter experience. Use
materials crafted and salvaged on the surface to outfit and
upgrade space fighters with a selection of powerful lasers,
plasma cannons, shields and more to become the terror of the
nebula!
Destroy the Enemy ñ Equip workers with blasters to fight
off hordes of disgusting, deadly aliens and expand territory.
Conquer Campaigns ñ Beat 50 levels of pulse-pounding space
action. Try to score three stars on each level to receive
rewards and salvage for completing missions.
ìAtariís history creating some of the most memorable arcade space
shooters was the inspiration for Lunar Battle,î said Fred
Chesnais, Chief Executive Officer, Atari. ìThe combination of our
classic combat gameplay with a multiplayer experience and
city-building simulation mechanics gives this all the makings of
an engaging mobile game that will hook players and keep them
coming back for deep space adventures again and again.î
Lunar Battle is currently in development by On5. For more
information, visit www.LunarBattle.com.
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE Gaming Online - Online Users Growl & Purr!
"""""""""""""""""""
Fans Improve 8-Bit Nintendo Super Pitfall for 30th Anniversary
Most of the time when we cover retro game hacks here on Retro
Gaming Magazine, it is usually to add a new character such as in
Streets of Rage 2. Sometimes it is an improvement such as this
one for Super Pitfall on the Nintendo Entertainment System. What
fans have done here is almost create a new game, at least they
did visually and aurally.
For those that donít know, Super Pitfall is a 2D side scrolling
action platform game that expanded on the original formula of
the Atari 2600 games. The levels were made bigger and longer,
enemies are more varied and Super Pitfall is more engaging in
general on the Nintendo NES.
Super Pitfall 30th Anniversary Edition is still the classic game,
just now the graphics and music have been improved beyond what
was formerly though possible on the 8-Bit Nintendo Entertainment
System. I mean, just look at the comparison shots below there.
That is an IMPROVEMENT and a half if I have ever seen one.
Not just gussied up graphics and music have found their way into
Super Pitfall 30th Anniversary Edition though. Nope, the fans
behind this hack have also added new menu screens, improved the
game level design a bit by removing unnecessary warps and hidden
items. Hardcore fans of Super Pitfall will probably notice a bit
of a performance improvement in this hack also. There is also a
fully automatic save feature included, at no extra charge. Who
wishes that some role playing games on the Nintendo
Entertainment System included a seamless automatic save feature?
I know I do.
As usual, we here at Retro Gaming Magazine do not condone piracy
and all of that jazz. For those that want the patch head over
to ROMHacking.net and grab it. We cannot link to a site to get
Super Pitfall as it is not freeware. If you enjoy this hack,
please remember to leave a comment on ROMHacking.net saying so,
the developers will appreciate it.
Global Game Gear Asks How Are You
Protecting Your Atari 2600 Collection?
It is an age old question. How to protect your gaming library.
Sure, there were some companies that provided protective sleeves
for ìsomeî of their titles. Nintendo did this for pretty much
all of the NES games that were officially licensed. They also
did this for ìsomeî of the Super Nintendo games they released -
eventually opting to drop the little plastic sleeve (many experts
\state that this move saved Nintendo a nickel per game). That is
all find and dandy if you still have those sleeves. For most
gamers buying titles loose, or used, those slip covers are LONG
gone. There are aftermarket options for SNES and others but what
about the Atari 2600? Atari never really addressed this issue.
Global Game Gear is stepping up and doing it for Atari- over 30
years later.
The protective covers that Global Game Gear are working to produce
are dusted and somewhat transparent. This allows protection to
the cartridge and label but still lets you see some of the
original artwork on the cartridge. That is what this is really
about, at least for me. Some of those Atari 2600 games had
amazing cover art on them. A completely opaque dust cover would
simply not work as that would block all of the artwork and that
would be a crime in my eyes.
Okay, letís get down to cost here. At the lowest pledge to
actually receive Global Game Gear dust covers for your Atari 2600
retro games you are going to get 10 units. This pledge is at
$15, which is about $1.50 per dust cover. I know, for a lot of
us that is more than we paid for the games we are putting into
the dust cover. For others, 10 units may not be enough. Pledge
at the highest level, $500, and you get 519 dust covers - this
level gives the most value, obviously but also the highest out of
pocket cost. At the $500 level, the Global Game Gear dust covers
are priced at just a hair above $0.96 each. This level is for
the hardcore collector that understands as time goes on getting
mint condition cartridges is going to eventually become a
valuable commodity.
So, how are you protecting your Atari 2600 retro gaming library?
If you donít have a solution and want one, here you go. I can
easily see collectors with valuable games opting for Global Game
Gear protective sleeves. If that is you then head over to their
Kickstarter and pledge.
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
Yahoo Says Hackers Stole Data from 500 Million Accounts in 2014
Yahoo Inc said on Thursday that at least 500 million of its
accounts were hacked in 2014 by what it believed was a
state-sponsored actor, a theft that appeared to be the world's
biggest known cyber breach by far.
Cyber thieves may have stolen names, email addresses, telephone
numbers, dates of birth and encrypted passwords, the company
said. But unprotected passwords, payment card data and bank
account information did not appear to have been compromised,
signalling that some of the most valuable user data was not
taken.
The attack on Yahoo was unprecedented in size, more than triple
other large attacks on sites such as eBay Inc , and it comes to
light at a difficult time for Yahoo.
Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer is under pressure to shore
up the flagging fortunes of the site founded in 1994, and the
company in July agreed to a $4.83 billion cash sale of its
internet business to Verizon Communications Inc .
"This is the biggest data breach ever,"ù said well-known
cryptologist Bruce Schneier, adding that the impact on Yahoo and
its users remained unclear because many questions remain,
including the identity of the state-sponsored hackers behind it.
On its website on Thursday, Yahoo encouraged users to change
their passwords but did not require it.
Although the attack happened in 2014, Yahoo only discovered the
incursion after August reports of a separate breach. While that
report turned out to be false, Yahoo's investigation turned up
the 2014 theft, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Analyst Robert Peck of SunTrust Robinson Humphrey said the breach
probably was not enough to prompt Verizon to abandon its deal
with Yahoo, but it could call for a price decrease of $100
million to $200 million, depending on how many users leave Yahoo.
Steven Caponi, an attorney at K&L Gates with a practice
including merger litigation, said that Yahoo's breach could fall
under the "material adverse change" clause common in mergers
allowing a buyer to walk away if its target's value deteriorates.
"That would give Verizon the opportunity to renegotiate the terms
or potentially walk away from the transaction if it is a material
change. Whether it is a material change will depend in large part
on what kind of information was compromised," Caponi said.
Still, it is rare for mergers to fall apart over material
changes. Verizon said in a statement it was made aware of the
breach within the last two days and had limited information about
the matter.
"We will evaluate as the investigation continues through the
lens of overall Verizon interests," the company said.
Shares of Yahoo stock closed a penny higher at $44.15, while
shares of Verizon, were up about 1 percent.
The Yahoo breach follows a rising number of other large-scale
data attacks and could make it a watershed event that prompts
government and businesses to put more effort into bolstering
defences, said Dan Kaminsky, a well-known internet security
expert.
Retailers and health insurers have been especially hard hit
after high-profile breaches at Home Depot Inc , Target Corp,
Anthem Inc and Premera Blue Cross.
"Five hundred of the Fortune 500 have been hacked," he said.
"If anything has changed, it's that these attacks are getting
publicly disclosed."
Three U.S. intelligence officials, who declined to be
identified by name, said they believed the attack was
state-sponsored because of its resemblance to previous hacks
traced to Russian intelligence agencies or hackers acting at
their direction.
Yahoo said it was working with law enforcement on the matter,
and the FBI said it was investigating.
"The investigation has found no evidence that the
state-sponsored actor is currently in Yahoo's network," the
company said.
While the breach comprised mostly low-value information, it did
include security questions and answers created by users
themselves. That data could make users vulnerable if they use
the same answers on other sites.
A former Yahoo employee said the Q&A were deliberately left
unencrypted, which allowed Yahoo to catch fake accounts more
easily because fake accounts tended to reuse questions and
answers.
News of the massive breach at one of the nation's largest email
providers may fan concern that U.S. companies and government
agencies are not doing enough to improve cyber security.
Democratic Senator Mark Warner said in a statement he was "most
troubled by news that this breach occurred in 2014, and yet the
public is only learning details of it today."
Technology website Recode first reported Tuesday that Yahoo
planned to disclose details about a data breach affecting
hundreds of millions of users.
House Panel Looking into Reddit Post Linked to Clintonís Deleted Email
Paul Combetta, the IT guy who reportedly deleted Hillary Clintonís
emails despite Congressí orders to preserve them, was given
immunity by the Department of Justice a few weeks ago.
Republicans wanted those email deletions investigated, but
Combettaís immunity deal made that prospect unlikely, the New York
Times reported earlier this month.
Itís just gotten more than likely: in fact, a House panel is now
looking into a Reddit post asking for help in how to delete
email, The Hill reports.
The investigation was sparked after an army of Redditor
investigators found what they consider a smoking gun: a user with
the handle of ìstonetearî who 2 years ago submitted a request for
advice on how to strip out a ìVERY VIPî email address ìfrom a
bunch of archived email.î
Combetta is an engineer with Platte River Networks, the firm that
managed Clintonís private server.
Heís currently one of the targets of a broader Oversight
investigation on whether Clinton ordered the destruction of
emails that had been subpoenaed by the Benghazi Select Committee.
Mark Meadows, a Republican Representative from North Carolina
and chairman of the House Oversight Committeeís Government
Operations subcommittee, told The Hill that the stonetear posts
are now under review:
The Reddit post issue and its connection to Paul Combetta is
currently being reviewed by OGR staff and evaluations are being
made as to the authenticity of the post.
Öand that the dates on the posts are ìtroubling.î
If it is determined that the request to change email
addresses was made by someone so closely aligned with the
Secretaryís IT operation as Mr. Combetta, then it will certainly
prompt additional inquiry.
The date of the Reddit post in relationship to the
establishment of the Select Committee on Benghazi is also
troubling.
The posts have since been deleted, but there are archived
copies, such as this one from a popular thread on the Donald
Trump-supporting subreddit r/The_Donald.
The archived post is the result of one forum member having
urged others toÖ
ARCHIVE EVERYTHING YOU CAN!!!!
Öwhen the original posts were taken down.
Hereís the text of the original Reddit post from stonetear, from
24 July 2014:
Hello all- I may be facing a very interesting situation
where I need to strip out a VIPís (VERY VIP) email address from
a bunch of archived email that I have both in a live Exchange
mailbox, as well as a PST file.
Basically, they donít want the VIPís email address exposed
to anyone, and want to be able to either strip out or replace
the email address in the to/from fields in all of the emails we
want to send out.
I am not sure if something like this is possible with
PowerShell, or exporting all of the emails to MSG and doing
find/replaces with a batch processing program of some sort.
Does anyone have experience with something like this, and/or
suggestions on how this might be accomplished?
That request came the day after the House Select Committee on
Benghazi had reached an agreement with the State Department on
the production of Clintonís email records, according to an FBI
report released earlier this month on the bureauís probe of her
email use.
And this is the text of a post from stonetear made on
10 December 2014:
Hello- I have a client who wants to push out a 60 day email
retention policy for certain users. However, they also want
these users to have a ëSave Folderí in their Exchange folder
list where the users can drop items that they want to hang onto
longer than the 60 day window.
All email in any other folder in the mailbox should purge
anything older than 60 days (should not apply to calendar or
contact items of course). How would I go about this? Some
combination of retention and managed folder policy?
According to the FBI report, longtime Clinton aide and attorney
Cheryl Mills had earlier that month asked that the email
retention policy be shortened to 60 days because Clinton had
decided she no longer needed access to messages older than that.
According to the report, MillsÖ
instructed [redacted] to modify the email retention policy
on Clintonís clintonemail.com e-mail account
Ö but that Ö
according to [redacted] he did not make these changes to
Clintonís clintonemail.com account until March 2015.
The New York Times has identified the redacted individual as more
than likely being Combetta.
According to the FBI report, redacted/Combetta had a
forehead-slapping moment in March when he realized heíd failed
to implement the new 60-day email retention policy:
[redacted] indicated he believed he had an ëoh sh*tí moment
and sometime between March 25-31, 2015, deleted the Clinton
archive mailbox from the [Platte River Networks] server and
used BleachBit to delete the exported .PST files he had created
on the server system containing Clintonís emails.
The identity of the ìstonetearî user is unconfirmed. Reddit
users are pointing to the fact that an account on the online
marketplace Etsy for a Paul Combetta has the same username
ìstonetearî, and the inactive website combetta.com is registered
to the email address stonetear@gmail.com.
As of Monday, US News hadnít received any replies after having
emailed that account.
According to The Hill, the committee looking into the matter
has scheduled another hearing on the ìpreservation of State
Department recordsî for Thursday.
Also, Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz, a Republican
Congressman from Utah, last Monday issued a subpoena to the FBI,
demanding the full case file from the email investigation.
He and other Republicans on the panel claim that the bureau has
withheld summaries of interviews with witnesses and
unnecessarily blacked out material from documents sent last
month.
FCC Republicans Refused To Give Congress Net Neutrality Documents
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica:
The two Republican members of the Federal Communications
Commission have refused to give Congress documents needed to
complete an investigation into the FCC's net neutrality
rule-making process, according to a lawmaker. "Your refusal to
cooperate with the Committee's request is unacceptable, it
obstructs our investigation, and it prevents the Committee from
having a complete or accurate understanding of the circumstances
surrounding this rulemaking," U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings
(D-Maryland) wrote in a letter to FCC Commissioners Ajit Pai and
Michael O'Rielly yesterday. There are "serious questions" about
"Pai's efforts to organize opposition to the proposed rule with
outside parties," Cummings' office said in a related press
release. "Pai previously worked as associate general counsel for
Verizon, one of the major opponents of the open Internet policy,
and he reportedly 'enjoys the support of conservative think
tanks like the Phoenix Center, the Free State Foundation and
TechFreedom,'" the press release said. O'Rielly wrote an op-ed
on the net neutrality rules in 2014, but only after he "sought
edits on [the] draft op-ed from three individuals outside the
FCC with professional interests that could be affected by the
rule," the press release said. The Republican lawmakers claimed
that President Obama had "an improper influence" over the FCC's
decision and demanded documentation of all communication
between FCC personnel and the White House, as well as calendar
appointments, visitor logs, and meeting minutes related to
meetings with the White House, plus all internal documents
discussing the views and recommendations of the White House.
They also asked for all documents and e-mails related to views
of FCC personnel about the net neutrality proceeding.
A Cummings staff member told Ars that the "request has the
backing of the full committee and all the enforcement mechanisms
the committee has, including issuing a subpoena." The committee
has schedule a hearing for September 27 on the status of
outstanding document requests to different federal agencies, and
could seek updates on the requests to the two Republican FCC
commissioners at this hearing, a Democratic aide for the
Oversight Committee also said.
Israeli Pentagon DDoSers Explain Their Work, Get Busted by FBI
Two Israeli men have been arrested for running a
distributed-denial-of service-as-a-service site, after one
seemingly claimed to attack the Pentagon.
Itay Huri and Yarden Bidani, released on US$10,000 bonds, were
arrested following a tip off from the FBI, local news site
TheMarker reports.
A Twitter account using Bidani's name and handle tweeted last
year that parts of the Pentagon site were down after a DDoS.
Their slick DDoS site vDos-s.com charged between US$30 and
US$200 a month for DDoS attacks sold as legitimate network
stress testing.
"We are not just another booter, we guarantee 10-50Gbps of UDP
traffic per stress test using our DNS method, our high end
dedicated servers can satisfy even the most power hungry
customers," the pair wrote on their site.
VDos targeted 150,000 victims according to a stolen database
provided to KrebsonSecurity lifted from the site by an anonymous
security researcher who exploited a vulnerability.
That database revealed the actors' identities along with details
of paying customers.
The lifted document mentions victim sites including the UK's
Imperial College Model United Nations club, game site
GoodGame.co.uk, and anti-DDoS site Zare.com.
KrebsonSecurity says the booter site made some US$600,000 over
the last two years.
The pair seemed to have tried to present the company as a
legitimate stress testing service, rather than as guns for hire.
Customers using the "legitimate stress testing company" are told
they "are prohibited from stressing internet connections and/or
servers that [they] do not have ownership of or authorisation to
test".
Huri and Bidan even authored a technical paper [PDF] on DDoS
last month, signing the document with their real names.
It's OK for The FBI's Fake Hacks To Hack Suspects' PCs,
Says DoJ Watchdog
No rules were broken when an FBI agent posed as a journalist to
infect a criminal suspect's PC with spyware, says a US watchdog.
And the Feds can do it again, provided they get the undercover
operation signed off by their higher-ups.
Way back in June 2007, 15-year-old Charles Jenkins used a Gmail
account to send a bomb threat to Timberline High School, near
Seattle, Washington, sparking an evacuation. Jenkins also
flooded Timberline's network with a 24-hour distributed
denial-of-service attack for good measure.
Over the next few days, the teen sent a string of bomb claims
to senior staff, using various Gmail accounts, triggering daily
evacuations of the school. The messages were sent from IP
addresses in Europe, suggesting the sender was working behind
anonymizing proxy servers.
After the kid also created a MySpace page to boast about the
threats, the Feds realized they were dealing with a classic
attention-loving narcissist, and a cunning plan was concocted: a
piece of spyware, dubbed a Computer and Internet Protocol Address
Verifier (CIPAV), would be injected onto Jenkins' PC to unmask
him.
An agent, pretending to be an Associated Press editor, would send
a message to the owner of the MySpace profile asking him for an
interview. That message would contain a link to a webpage dressed
up as a legit article. Hidden in that page is code that installs
spyware on the machine, collecting information such as the public
IP address, MAC address, details of the logged-in user, and so
on. All this data is sent back to the FBI's servers for
processing.
The Feds followed standard procedure and were granted a search
warrant by a court ñ their application to the judge did not
detail exactly how the operation would be carried out, simply
that the CIPAV would be installed ìthrough an electronic
messaging program from an account controlled by the FBI," and
that it would "conduct a one-time search of the activating
computer."
Thus, FBI Special Agent Mason Grant messaged Jenkins with a link
to a fake Seattle Times webpage asking if it was accurate and if
the teen had any comment. Interestingly, even though the boy
clicked on the link, the CIPAV failed to run due to undisclosed
settings in his browser. In a followup Gmail chat with the
undercover agent, Jenkins clicked on a link to some images,
supplied by Grant, and the surveillance-ware was deployed. This
coughed up his real public IP addresses, leading the FBI to his
parents' home, where he was arrested and confessed.
The Feds' involvement in the case only came to light in 2014
when the EFF revealed Agent Grant had posed as an AP journalist.
The newswire subsequently sued the federal government.
Now, the Office of the Inspector General at the US Department
of Justice has this week published a report on the whole affair
[PDF] and concluded that everything was done by the book ñ
although under policy changes in June this year, a similar
operation today would require the green light from a string of
senior staff.
That policy tweak was made following the revelations from the
Jenkins' case, and provides clearer guidance for undercover
agents impersonating news media professionals.
Here's the highlights of the report:
We found that Department and FBI policies in effect in 2007
did not prohibit agents from impersonating journalists or from
posing as a member of a news organization, nor was there any
requirement that agents seek special approval to engage in such
undercover activities. The only policies in effect at the time
that might have required elevated consideration regarding the
FBIís plans turned on whether the undercover activity involved
a ìsensitive circumstance.î
We concluded, given the lack of clarity in the policy
language, that making a determination whether a situation was a
ìsensitive circumstanceî was a challenging one and that the
judgments made by the agents were not unreasonable given the
lack of clarity.
And finally:
We also found that prior to the adoption of the new interim
policy in June 2016, FBI policy would not have prohibited FBI
employees from engaging in the undercover activities agents
conducted during the 2007 Timberline investigation.
The new interim policy, however, clearly prohibits FBI
employees from engaging in an undercover activity in which they
represent, pose, or claim to be members of the news media, unless
the activity is authorized as part of an undercover operation.
In order for such an operation to be authorized, the
undercover application must first be approved by the head of the
FBI field office submitting the application to FBIHQ, reviewed
by the Undercover Review Committee at FBIHQ, and approved by the
Deputy Director, after consultation with the Deputy Attorney
General.
In the end, a serial bomb hoaxer was collared and carted off
after a mostly well-executed operation. But the use of spyware
delivered through web links is problematic. Many things can go
wrong ñ imagine the chaos if the link was shared on social
networks, infecting any number of systems, and if the shared
payload fell into the hands of miscreants to reverse engineer
and exploit privately.
This is on top of concerns that injected snitchware is
potentially inadmissible in court due to the secrecy and
security issues surrounding the code.
The AP, meanwhile, is furious.
"The Associated Press is deeply disappointed by the inspector
generalís findings, which effectively condone the FBIís
impersonation of an AP journalist in 2007," Paul Colford, the
newswire's director of media relations, said on Thursday.
"Such action compromises the ability of a free press to gather
the news safely and effectively and raises serious constitutional
concerns.
"Once again AP calls on the government to refrain from any
activities involving the impersonation of the news media and we
demand to be heard in the development of any policies addressing
such conduct."
Why The Silencing of KrebsOnSecurity Opens
A Troubling Chapter for The ëNet
For the better part of a day, KrebsOnSecurity, arguably the
world's most intrepid source of security news, has been silenced,
presumably by a handful of individuals who didn't like a recent
series of exposÈs reporter Brian Krebs wrote. The incident, and
the record-breaking data assault that brought it on, open a
troubling new chapter in the short history of the Internet.
The crippling distributed denial-of-service attacks started
shortly after Krebs published stories stemming from the hack of
a DDoS-for-hire service known as vDOS. The first article analyzed
leaked data that identified some of the previously anonymous
people closely tied to vDOS. It documented how they took in more
than $600,000 by knocking other sites offline. A few days later,
Krebs ran a follow-up piece detailing the arrests of two men who
allegedly ran the service.
On Thursday morning, exactly two weeks after Krebs published his
first post, he reported that a sustained attack was bombarding his
site with as much as 620 gigabits per second of junk data. That
staggering amount of data is among the biggest ever recorded.
Krebs was able to stay online thanks to the generosity of Akamai,
a network provider that providd a DDoS mitigation service to him
for free. The attack showed no signs of waning as the day wore
on. Some indications suggest it may have grown stronger. At 4 pm,
Akamai gave Krebs two hours' notice that it would no longer
assume the considerable cost of defending KrebsOnSecurity. Krebs
opted to shut down the site to prevent collateral damage hitting
his service provider and its customers.
"It's hard to imagine a stronger form of censorship than these
DDoS attacks because if nobody wants to take you on then that's
pretty effective censorship," Krebs told Ars on Friday. "I've
had a couple of big companies offer and then think better of
offering to help me. That's been frustrating."
Until recently, a DDoS attack in excess of 600Gb was nearly
impossible for all but the most sophisticated and powerful
actors to carry out. In 2013, attacks against anti-spam
organization Spamhaus generated headlines because the 300Gb
torrents were coming uncomfortably close to Internet-threatening
size. The assault against KrebsOnSecurity represents a much
greater threat for at least two reasons. First, it's twice the
size. Second and more significant, unlike the Spamhaus attacks,
the staggering volume of bandwidth doesn't rely on misconfigured
domain name system servers which, in the big picture, can be
remedied with relative ease.
Instead, the attacks against KrebsOnSecurity harness so-called
Internet-of-things devicesóthink home routers, webcams, digital
video recorders, and other everyday appliances that have
Internet capabilities built into them. Manufacturers design
these devices to be as inexpensive and easy-to-use as possible.
Consumers often have little technical skill. As a result, the
devices frequently come with bug-ridden firmware that never gets
updated and easy-to-guess login credentials that never get
changed. Their lax security and always-connected status makes the
devices easy to remotely commandeer by people who turn them into
digital cannons that spray the Internet with shrapnel. On
Thursday, security firm Symantec cataloged 11 different families
of IoT malware that do just that.
"The current IoT threat landscape shows that it does not require
much to exploit an embedded device," Symantec researchers wrote
in the report, which was headlined "IoT devices being increasingly
used for DDoS attacks." "While we have come across several malware
variants exploiting device vulnerabilitiesósuch as Shellshock or
the flaw in Ubiquiti routersóthe majority of the threats simply
take advantage of weak built-in defenses and default password
configurations in embedded devices."
The growing supply of IoT malware is creating a tipping point in
the denial-of-service domain that's giving relatively
unsophisticated actors capabilities that were once reserved only
for the most elite of attackers. And that, in turn, represents a
threat to the Internet as we know it.
"The biggest threats as far as I'm concerned in terms of
censorship come from these ginormous weapons these guys are
building," Krebs said. "The idea that tools that used to be
exclusively in the hands of nation states are now in the hands of
individual actors, it's kind of like the specter of a James Bond
movie."
Krebs said he has explored the possibility of retaining a DDoS
mitigation service, but he found that the costósomewhere between
$100,000 and $200,000 per year for the type of always-on
protection he needs against high-bandwidth attacksóis more than
he can afford. For the past four years, he received pro bono help
from Prolexic, which was later acquired by Akamai. Over that
time, the service has defended KrebsOnSecurity against what he
estimates are hundreds of attacks. The latest round has brought
that relationship to an end. Krebs said he hopes to be back
online later Friday with the help of a service he declined to
discuss on the record. Still, he said, he's not sure how long
the new arrangement will last.
Of course, if a ragtag band of pseudo-hackers can disrupt
KrebsOnSecurity, they can disrupt plenty of other sites, too.
And this should concern not just the Googles, Apples, and
Microsofts of the world but their everyday users as well. Krebs
said the threat "screams out" for the kind of industry-wide
collaboration that's come together to counter previous threats,
including the DNS spoofing bug researcher Dan Kaminsky
disclosed in 2008, the Conficker worm that infected huge swaths
of the Internet the same year, or the GameOver botnet from last
year. Sadly, Krebs said he sees no signs of such cooperation now.
"Free speech in the age of the Internet is not really free," he
said. "We're long overdue to treat this threat with a lot more
urgency. Unfortunately, I just don't see that happening right now."
ACLU Is Launching A Campaign To Convince
President Obama To Pardon Edward Snowden
Coinciding with the launch of Oliver Stone's movie Snowden in
select theaters this week, a coalition of civil rights groups are
launching a campaign to convince President Obama to pardon NSA
whistleblower Edward Snowden. Fusion reports:
The effort, which is organized by the ACLU, Amnesty International,
and Human Rights Watch, will gather signatures from regular people
and endorsements from celebrities. Snowden will speak by video
link from Moscow at a press conference on Wednesday morning in New
York, and an initial list of "prominent legal scholars, policy
experts, human rights leaders, technologists and former government
officials" in support of the cause will be released, according to
a statement from the campaign. A presidential pardon would mean
that Snowden could come home from Moscow, where he's lived for the
past three years, without the fear of being prosecuted. He
currently faces federal charges of violating the Espionage Act and
stealing government property, even though his disclosures led to
reform of the wiretapping program by Congress.
Many Snowden supporters are hoping the movie Snowden, which opens
in U.S. theaters on Friday, will spur support for a pardon. "I
think the value of the movie is that it's lsikely to reach
millions of people who have not been paying close attention to
Snowden or to the debate about surveillance and privacy,"
Snowden's layer at the ACLU, Ben Wizner, told Fusion. "Those
people will emerge from the movie more educated about
surveillance and with more positive attitudes toward Snowden."
EU Promises Free Wi-Fi to All
To expand its digital initiatives, the European Commission has
planned to provide free wi-fi in all the public spaces across
its member's states within four years. The EU has a budget of
Ä120 million set for this.
The commission will provide the set budget to subsidize the
purchase and installation of Wi-Fi hotspots in 6,000 or more
locations, but the provision of bandwidth and ongoing
maintenance will be left to the local communities.
The project, WIFI4EU (Wi-Fi for EU) was announced by the
president of the European Union's executive body, Jean-Claude
Juncker, in his annual state of the union address on Wednesday
(September 14) which aims to put free Wi-Fi hotspots open to all
EU citizens in parks, squares, libraries and other public
buildings.
The hotspots will be open to all EU citizens, although given the
budget it's unlikely many of them will be able to get a signal
without a long walk. In many towns and cities, people can
already find free wi-fi on the High Street.
If local park or library already offers a paid Wi-Fi service,
then the EU subsidy isn't going to change anything. Projects that
compete with a similar, existing private or public Wi-Fi offering
will not be funded.
Juncker also announced that at least one city in each EU country
will be deployed by the 5G mobile network by 2020.
This initiative would be crucial in rural areas where cellular
networks are spotty or non-existent, and local organizations
don't always have the means to offer free WiFi hotspots. If a
Ä120 million ($135 million) grant receives approval, communities
would have access to the funds before the end of 2017.
Till 2025, EU has set some goals regarding the project which
include minimum download speed of 100Mbps for all European
households, minimum download and upload speeds of 1GBps for all
hospitals, administrations and other public services reliant on
digital technologies and uninterrupted 5G access for all major
roads and railways.
The commission hopes to serve thousands of connections daily. If
one connection represents one user, its goal is to connect
almost one-tenth of the EU's population each day.
However, there is a doubt if the public would benefit or not as
European officials have been struggling to deliver an earlier
promise to abolish mobile roaming fees.
The EU is also committed to its promises of erasing borders for
media services, too. It wants to make content accessible across
the Union so that the content is not limited in oneís home
country. People can watch German Netflix shows while visiting
France, for example. They could also buy pay-TV movies and
similar material from other countries, some of which might well
be less expensive than it is at home. Broadcasters would still
have control over whether or not their content is available in
other countries.
The new pledges may not apply to the UK because it may have quit
the EU before the end of the decade.
With this proposal, there are copyright changes which are
disturbing Google. The proposal would require better data
sharing and transparency for creators, but it would also give
press publishers rights that ensure they get a "fair share" of
revenues for material they post online. This law is similar to
ones in Germany and Spain which ask search engines like Google
to pay up when they show an article snippet in their results.
The EU contends that this is necessary to make sure writers are
"paid fairly," but Google unsurprisingly objects. It believes
that the German and Spanish laws "failed," and that these
demands for payment ultimately hurt publishers by giving web
users fewer reasons to click through to an article.
Moreover, the proposal requires that content uploaded on YouTube
is copyrighted. While this does include "content recognition
technologies" (possibly a reference to YouTube's Content ID),
Google is worried that the measure would require screening
content before it goes public, which would demand far more work
and investigation.
The proposal needs to clear both the European Parliament and
individual governments to go forward. It may take a long time
before the initiative takes effect without any significant
changes. The initiative if applied would give a different
digital landscape to entire Europe but there's a concern that
Google and others like it might scale back their European
presence rather than make the effort to comply with new
copyright laws.
Twitterís New, ëSimplerí Rules for
Character Counts in Tweets Go Live
Did you hear? Twitter would like you to know that its service is
now easier to use, thanks to a series of rule revisions announced
in May, which have just gone live. Starting today, Twitter is
cutting down on what counts towards your 140 characters. As a
refresher, that means media content like photos, videos, GIFs,
polls and Quote Tweets no longer eat into your character count.
Links still do, however.
As you may recall, Twitter first announced all these changes
earlier this year, but delayed their rollout to give the
developer community time to adapt.
Along with changing what counts towards the 140 characters,
Twitter also announced other tweaks at the same time ñ like
ditching the ì.@î format, for example. This convention came about
when people wanted to send tweets that began with an ì@usernameî
to their entire audience. Something of a user-generated hack,
the period ì.î circumvented Twitterís restrictions on which
tweets appear in followersí Timelines.
Twitter likes to tout all these changes as a means of
simplifying its service ñ something itís doing in an effort to
appeal to new users who find the intricacies of using Twitter
confusing. Twitter has seen its user growth stagnate, which has
been worrying Wall St. and leading to rumors that the service is
looking for an acquirer.
The goal with its departure from the 140 characters ñ Twitterís
defining feature from day one ñ is to make the service easier to
use.
And itís just so much easier, right?
Right?
In case you need a cheat sheet, hereís a summary of Twitterís
newer, ìsimplerî rules, including all those announced alongside
the character count changes back in May. (See below)
(Note that the RT and QT changes were shipped a few months ago,
while the @mentions and ì.@î changes are still forthcoming.)
You can only use 140 characters when composing a tweet.
(Simplicity at its finest!)
Oh, except when youíre posting non-text content like videos,
GIFs, pictures and polls?ó?those donít count toward your 140
characters.
But links still do.
Quote tweets donít though. Because even though theyíre text,
theyíre like, old. Old stuff doesnít count, only new stuff
doesÖ.I think.
ANYWAY, @mentions in replies wonít show anymore in the
tweet?ó?theyíre like, in the header in the user interface or
something.
Yep, so these @mentions wonít count toward the 140 and you
can mention up to 50 people.
But if you want everyone to see your @reply, Twitter wants
you to retweet yourself.
Right?ó?you can do that, Twitter says!?ó?retweet yourself.
And quote yourself.
If you donít do that, not everyone will see your @reply.
Well, I mean if you write a new tweet that starts with an
@username thatís like, not technically a reply. So it will been
seen by everyone.
So actually, Twitter is not really changing the rules for
who can see your replies?ó?because new tweets that begin with
@username mentions arenít really replies. The only people who
will see your @ reply in their timeline are those who follow you
and the person youíre replying to. Like before!
Which means, I guess, if you want everyone to see your tweet
even when they donít follow both parties you could still use the
period before the @username to make that happenÖ.? Hold on, Iím
getting confusedÖ
But now you can retweet yourselfÖso I guess Twitter would
prefer you did that instead of using the dot @username thing?
So this whole change is more of a suggestion, I guess?
Oh, and use the native retweet if you retweet yourselfÖno
one writes ìRTî anymore.
Or ìMT.î No one does that. That was dumb.
But when @usernames are mentioned in tweets, they still
count toward your 140 characters like regular words do. (Just
not when youíre replying to those @usernames and the @usernames
are auto-populated).
I mean, really, isnít this so much better than ñ oh, I donít know
ñ just displaying the first 140 characters, then hiding the rest
behind a click?
And isnít this feature set just hugely in demand, even more so
than an ìedit your tweetî button or some sort of legitimate
product built in response to the widespread cyberbullying and
trolling that takes place on TwitterÖyou know, something like
what Instagram just launched?
I mean, I donít hear anyone asking for these thingsÖ
AnywayÖnew ways to reduce character count. Yay.
=~=~=~=
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