Month: October 2017

Enlarge (credit: Kaspersky Lab)

An NSA worker who reportedly snuck classified materials out of the agency stored them on a home computer that was later infected by a malicious backdoor that allowed third-parties to remotely access the machine, officials with Moscow-based antivirus provider Kaspersky Lab said.

The NSA worker—described in some published reports as a contractor and in others as an employee—installed the backdoor after Kaspersky AV had first detected never-before-seen NSA malware samples on his computer. The backdoor was part of a pirated software package that the worker downloaded and installed. To run the pirated software, he first had to disable the AV program on his computer. After being infected, the worker re-enabled the AV program and scanned his computer multiple times, resulting in Kaspersky developing detections for new and unknown variants of the NSA malware.

The NSA worker's computer ran a home version of Kaspersky AV that had enabled a voluntary service known as Kaspersky Security Network. When turned on, KSN automatically uploads new and previously unknown malware to company Kaspersky Lab servers. The setting eventually caused the previously undetected NSA malware to be uploaded to Kaspersky Lab servers, where it was then reviewed by a company analyst.

Enlarge / Let's go camping in Animal Crossing! (credit: Nintendo)

Over a year after its official teasing, Nintendo finally took the wraps off the first Animal Crossing game for smartphones on Tuesday. Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp will launch for iOS and Android devices "in late November" for free.

Much like other Animal Crossing games, Pocket Camp will invite players to customize their own home, do simple chores for in-game cash (known as Bells), collect little critters like bugs and fish, and get into a strange "borrow money to expand my home" loan situation. It looks almost exactly like other Animal Crossing games, complete with its top-down perspective and simple-and-expressive characters, and you move around and interact with objects simply by tapping the screen. This time, however, Nintendo opts for an outdoor theme, meaning your job is to maintain a campsite and an RV, not a house. (And the aforementioned loan arrangement is not with the home-expanding Tom Nook, but rather with a trio of incredibly cute RV-repair penguins.)