Leaking Military Secrets on Gaming Discussion Boards
People are leaking classified military information on discussion boards for the video game War Thunder to win arguments—repeatedly.
Entries Tagged "games"
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Hacker-Themed Board Game
Black Hat is a hacker-themed board game.
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid-Related Game
It’s called “Squid Fishering.”
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
Read my blog posting guidelines here.
Malware Hidden in Call of Duty Cheating Software
News article:
Most troublingly, Activision says that the “cheat” tool has been advertised multiple times on a popular cheating forum under the title “new COD hack.” (Gamers looking to flout the rules will typically go to such forums to find new ways to do so.) While the report doesn’t mention which forum they were posted on (that certainly would’ve been helpful), it does say that these offerings have popped up a number of times. They have also been seen advertised in YouTube videos, where instructions were provided on how gamers can run the “cheats” on their devices, and the report says that “comments [on the videos] seemingly indicate people had downloaded and attempted to use the tool.”
Part of the reason this attack could work so well is that game cheats typically require a user to disable key security features that would otherwise keep a malicious program out of their system. The hacker is basically getting the victim to do their own work for them.
“It is common practice when configuring a cheat program to run it the with the highest system privileges,” the report notes. “Guides for cheats will typically ask users to disable or uninstall antivirus software and host firewalls, disable kernel code signing, etc.”
Detailed report.
US Cyber Command Valentine’s Day Cryptography Puzzles
The US Cyber Command has released a series of ten Valentine’s Day “Cryptography Challenge Puzzles.”
Slashdot thread. Reddit thread. (And here’s the archived link, in case Cyber Command takes the page down.)
Including Hackers in NATO Wargames
This essay makes the point that actual computer hackers would be a useful addition to NATO wargames:
The international information security community is filled with smart people who are not in a military structure, many of whom would be excited to pose as independent actors in any upcoming wargames. Including them would increase the reality of the game and the skills of the soldiers building and training on these networks. Hackers and cyberwar experts would demonstrate how industrial control systems such as power supply for refrigeration and temperature monitoring in vaccine production facilities are critical infrastructure; they’re easy targets and should be among NATO’s priorities at the moment.
Diversity of thought leads to better solutions. We in the information security community strongly support the involvement of acknowledged nonmilitary experts in the development and testing of future cyberwar scenarios. We are confident that independent experts, many of whom see sharing their skills as public service, would view participation in these cybergames as a challenge and an honor.
Rock-Paper-Scissors Robot
How in the world did I not know about this for three years?
Researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a robot that always wins at rock-paper-scissors. It watches the human player’s hand, figures out which finger position the human is about to deploy, and reacts quickly enough to always win.
EDITED TO ADD (6/13): Seems like this is even older—from 2013.
More Attacks against Computer Automatic Update Systems
Last month, Kaspersky discovered that Asus’s live update system was infected with malware, an operation it called Operation Shadowhammer. Now we learn that six other companies were targeted in the same operation.
As we mentioned before, ASUS was not the only company used by the attackers. Studying this case, our experts found other samples that used similar algorithms. As in the ASUS case, the samples were using digitally signed binaries from three other Asian vendors:
- Electronics Extreme, authors of the zombie survival game called Infestation: Survivor Stories,
- Innovative Extremist, a company that provides Web and IT infrastructure services but also used to work in game development,
- Zepetto, the South Korean company that developed the video game Point Blank.
According to our researchers, the attackers either had access to the source code of the victims’ projects or they injected malware at the time of project compilation, meaning they were in the networks of those companies. And this reminds us of an attack that we reported on a year ago: the CCleaner incident.
Also, our experts identified three additional victims: another video gaming company, a conglomerate holding company and a pharmaceutical company, all in South Korea. For now we cannot share additional details about those victims, because we are in the process of notifying them about the attack.
Me on supply chain security.
EDITED TO ADD (6/12): Kaspersky’s expanded report.
Defeating the "Deal or No Deal" Arcade Game
Two teenagers figured out how to beat the “Deal or No Deal” arcade game by filming the computer animation and then slowing it down enough to determine where the big prize was hidden.
Hacking the McDonald's Monopoly Sweepstakes
Long and interesting story—now two decades old—of massive fraud perpetrated against the McDonald’s Monopoly sweepstakes. The central fraudster was the person in charge of securing the winning tickets.
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.