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Join the fight—for less. (And, well, get quite a bit less.) (credit: Activision)

If you've ever dreamt of a world in which you could buy a Call of Duty game without any of the campaign nonsense—no "press B to pay respects," no forced airport massacres—Activision has finally heard your prayers. Somewhat.

On Tuesday, the company snuck a special multiplayer-only variant of Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 onto Steam's Windows store at the reduced price of $15. The Multiplayer Starter Pack has quite a few restrictions, the most peculiar of which is a limited-time-only sale window. Think of it like Activision's take on those old clamshell Disney VHS releases—meaning, on February 29, the MSP goes back into the vault, limited only to those who already bought it.

As expected, this reduced-price variant has axed the game's entire campaign mode, but it also removes the game's popular, multiplayer-friendly Zombies mode. MSP buyers can access public ranked multiplayer battles "with a level cap of 55," along with the "arena" ranking variant, the parkour-tastic "freerun" mode, the "cryptokey" exchange system for new online-combat loot, and weapon editing options in the "paintshop" and "gunsmith" menus.

(credit: Kārlis Dambrāns)

On Tuesday, a federal judge in Riverside, California ordered Apple to help the government unlock and decrypt the iPhone 5C used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who shot up an office party in a terrorist attack in nearby San Bernardino in December 2015.

Specifically, United States Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym mandated that Apple provide the FBI a custom firmware file, known as an IPSW file, that would likely enable investigators to brute force the passcode lockout currently on the phone, which is running iOS 9.

As Judge Pym wrote:

(credit: Aurich Lawson)

The Stuxnet computer worm that destroyed centrifuges inside Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment site was only one element of a much larger US-prepared cyberattack plan that targeted Iran's air defenses, communications systems, and key parts of its power grid, according to articles published Tuesday.

The contingency plan, known internally as Nitro Zeus, was intended to be carried out in the event that diplomatic efforts to curb Iran's nuclear development program failed and the US was pulled into a war between Iran and Israel, according to an article published by The New York Times. At its height, planning for the program involved thousands of US military and intelligence personnel, tens of millions of dollars in expenditures, and the placing of electronic implants in Iranian computer networks to ensure the operation targeting critical infrastructure would work at a moment's notice.

Another piece of the plan involved using a computer worm to destroy computer systems at the Fordo nuclear enrichment site, which was built deep inside a mountain near the Iranian city of Qom. It had long been considered one of the hardest Iranian targets to disable and was intended to be a follow-up to "Olympic Games," the code name of the plan Stuxnet fell under.