Month: June 2018

(credit: Nathan Mattise)

Apple on Monday previewed a variety of security and privacy features it plans to add to macOS and iOS operating systems, including encrypted Facetime group calls, password-management tools, and camera and microphone protections. The company also released a beta version of the upcoming iOS 12 that, according to Motherboard, all but kills off two iPhone unlocking tools used by police forces around the world.

The feature, known as USB Restricted Mode, requires that users unlock their iPhone with a password when connecting to it a USB device. Motherboard said the beta requires a password each time a phone that hasn’t been unlocked in the past hour tries to connect to a device using a Lightning connection. The password requirement largely neutralizes iPhone unlocking tools provided by companies called Cellebrite and GrayShift, which reportedly use USB connectivity to bypass iOS restrictions on the number of incorrect PIN guesses can be entered into an unlocked iPhone. With those limitations removed, police can make an unlimited number of PIN guesses when attempting to unlock a confiscated iPhone.

Previous iOS betas had USB restrictions that required the entering of a password when it hadn’t been unlocked for seven days. Those USB Restricted Modes were later removed before Apple issued final versions of iOS. The restrictions this time around are much more stringent, because police would have no more than 60 minutes between the time they obtain an iPhone and connect it to an unlocking tool. Readers should remember that Apple has previously removed USB Restricted Mode before releasing final versions and may do so again with iOS 12.

Enlarge (credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft is buying GitHub for $7.5 billion dollars, and predictably, there's a developer backlash.

GitHub, though notionally a for-profit company, has become an essential, integral part of the open-source community. GitHub offers free hosting for open-source projects and has risen to become the premiere service for collaborative, open-source development: the authoritative source repository for many of these projects, with GitHub's own particular pull-request-based workflow becoming a de facto standard approach for taking code contributions.

The fear is that Microsoft is hostile to open source and will do something to GitHub (though exactly what isn't clear) to undermine the open-source projects that depend on it. Comments here at Ars, as well as on Slashdot, Reddit and Hacker News, suggest not any specific concerns but a widespread lack of trust, at least among certain developers, of Microsoft's behavior, motives, and future plans for the service.

Enlarge (credit: FlightSimLabs)

The last time FlightSimLabs made news outside of the insular community of high-end flight simulator fans, it was for some invasive password-extractor malware included with a recent add-on package as an ostensible "anti-piracy" measure. Today, the company is again making waves for what many see as overzealous legal threats in response to legitimate discussion of the company.

Today's controversy begins with a Reddit thread that noted FlightSimLabs' A320 add-on installing "cmdhost.exe" files in the "system32" and "SysWOW64" folders inside the Windows directory. The strange filename and location—which seems designed to closely match those of actual Windows system files—made some Reddit users suspicious, especially given FlightSimLabs history of undisclosed installations.

FlightSimLabs responded on Facebook last Thursday by saying that the files came from third-party e-commerce service eSellerate and were designed to "reduce the number of product activation issues people were having." This system has been acknowledged in the FlightSimLabs forums in the past, and it apparently passes all major antivirus checks.

Enlarge / Deadfire's presentation feels improved in nearly every way over its predecessor.

My sword really likes being stabbed into people. I know this because she (he? it?) told me so. Her name is Modwyr, and she only stops insulting me when the conversation turns toward potential violence. It’s making me uncomfortable, but the bonus stats I get for keeping Modwyr around are too juicy to pass up. I’ve got a god to kill, after all. At least I think I do.

There is no shortage of choices to make in Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire. The pirate-centric sequel to developer Obsidian’s throwback RPG doesn’t skimp on that facet of the pen-and-paper role-playing game it replicates. Some of my choices from the previous game have already come back to haunt me, thanks to an imported save, though newcomers have the option to write their own history near the beginning of Deadfire.

The god of entropy is pissed. He’s not the one I’m hunting as part of Deadfire’s main story, but I lied to him in the first PoE. Now he’s promising a showdown.

I’ll get to that eventually. For the time being, though, I’ve got pirates to hunt, my own crew to manage, several imperialist governments to support or betray, and a talking sword to placate. It’s a lot of intrigue to disentangle—with consequences rearing their ugly heads immediately after doing so. But my player-character is the perfect psychic, soul-reading, pirate lord for the job.