Month: November 2018

Enlarge (credit: Mira Mechtley )

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) and the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine have detected a new strain of the Pterodo Windows backdoor targeting computers at Ukrainian government agencies, leading officials in Kiev to warn of a pending large-scale cyber attack.

In an alert posted to the organization's website, a CERT-UA official wrote:

CERT-UA together with the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine found new modifications of Pterodo-type malware on computers of state authorities of Ukraine, which is likely to be the preparatory stage for a cyber attack. This virus collects system data, regularly sends it to command-control servers and expects further commands.

Pterodo, also known as Pteradon, is associated with the Gamaredon threat group, a group of attacks based largely on off-the-shelf software that have focused on Ukrainian military and government targets. Pterodo is a custom backdoor used to insert other malware and collect information. The latest version activates only on Windows systems with language localization for Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Tatar, and other languages associated with former Soviet states; this makes it more difficult to perform automated analysis of the malware with certain tools.

Welcome to the latest edition of "War Stories," where we sit down with video game developers and cajole them into talking about the gameplay design elements that almost broke their brains. In this episode, we're chatting up Tim Jones, the lead artist and producer of 1999's Aliens versus Predator.

Jumping on the brand wagon

The Aliens versus Predator brand is a childhood fever dream brought to life—who hasn't had playground arguments over who'd win in a fight between some of the biggest and baddest bad guys of them all? The idea of watching supernal figures battle it out is both fun and endlessly attractive, because everyone likes a spectacle, and the biggest spectacle of all comes from watching one irresistible alien force slam into another unmovable alien object. Sparks fly, things explode, and we're happy.

The "Aliens versus Predator" concept first appeared in graphic novel form, but it was catapulted into mainstream consciousness by a series of films in the 2000s. Though definitely spectacular in the most literal sense of the word, the movies all ultimately fall short in just about every other area; only the first, released in 2004, is (arguably) watchable without the aid of alcohol or other drugs.

Enlarge / Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner on the South Lawn of the White House. (credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

First daughter and presidential advisor Ivanka Trump used a personal email account dozens of times to conduct official White House business, The Washington Post reports, citing an internal White House investigation. It's an ironic revelation given her father's obsession with Hillary Clinton's own use of a private email server during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Federal law requires government officials to preserve written records of their activities—and that includes email. Government email systems are set up to comply with these laws, and federal IT guidelines require government officials to use their official email accounts for all official business. The use of official email accounts may also reduce the risk of sensitive communications being intercepted by foreign intelligence agencies.

But senior government officials have not always been scrupulous about following these rules. Hillary Clinton famously did work as secretary of state using a personal email address linked to an email server located in her home in Chappaqua, New York. Republicans turned this records-management snafu into a prominent issue in the 2016 campaign.

Enlarge / Elon Musk speaks near a Falcon 9 rocket during his announcement that Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa will be the first private passenger to fly around the Moon aboard the BFR launch vehicle. (credit: DAVID MCNEW/AFP/Getty Images)

SpaceX and Elon Musk have been in the news a lot in recent days, both because of financial disclosures and the rocket company founder's musings on Twitter about his current space obsession—the Big Falcon Rocket or BFR. There has been a lot to process, so here's our best attempt to make sense of what Musk has said and what it may really mean. Musk started breaking news about SpaceX rocket designs about two weeks ago, so we'll start there.

Mini BFR Ship

On Wednesday, November 7, Musk tweeted that the "Falcon 9 second stage will be upgraded to be like a mini-BFR Ship." He added that this upgraded second stage could be ready to fly by June 2019. This prompted a flurry of speculation that SpaceX may be taking steps toward making the second stage of its Falcon 9 rocket—the part of the booster that presently inserts a payload into orbit and then burns up upon reentry to Earth's atmosphere—fully reusable.

However, this was not to be the case. Later, Musk clarified that this upgraded "mini-BFR Ship" will essentially be a small test version of the Big Falcon Spaceship, the spacecraft intended to fly on top of the Big Falcon Rocket booster. Currently, he said, the company cannot test features such as an "ultra light heat shield" and "high Mach control surfaces" without doing an orbital reentry. The company still intends to build a Big Falcon Spaceship for supersonic reentry and landing tests at SpaceX's facility in Boca Chica, Texas. It is not clear how many missions the mini-BFR Ship will fly.

(credit: Valve)

Valve is quietly discontinuing Steam Link, the in-home streaming box it first launched in late 2015. A low-key announcement on Valve's Steam Link news page suggests that production of new units has ceased and that Valve is currently selling off the rest of its "almost sold out" inventory in the US, after selling out completely in Europe. Valve says it will continue to offer support for existing Steam Link hardware.

The $50 Steam Link was designed for streaming games from a local gaming PC to an HDTV in the same house, a job it did pretty well provided your networking hardware was up to it. In recent months, though, Valve has shifted its focus away from dedicated streaming hardware and toward mobile apps that can provide the same feature.

Apple is currently blocking the release of a Steam Link app designed for Apple TV and iOS devices, but similar apps are available for Samsung Galaxy devices and other Android phones (in beta). Steam users have been able to stream to laptops on the same network since 2014, as well.