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- Nintendo Switch has 36 ‘million-seller’ games (including 14 third-party games)
- Nintendo sold 10.6 million copies of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe last year
- Nintendo Switch hits 84.59 million units sold, with 28.8 million sold this past year
- The FBI is breaking into corporate computers to remove malicious code – smart cyber defense or government overreach?
- U.S. Senate committee to consider technology research spending bill
- Jeff Bezos sells more than $2.4B in Amazon stock
- Twitter’s latest robo-nag will flag “harmful” language before you post
- Dell patches a 12-year-old privilege escalation vulnerability
- IoT is critical to enterprise digital transformation, Omdia says
- Google just announced a rare exciting update for Android tablets
| Nintendo Switch has 36 ‘million-seller’ games (including 14 third-party games) Posted: 06 May 2021 01:42 AM PDT  Nintendo Switch has 36 “million-seller” games. That includes Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but it also counts surprise hits like Clubhouse Games.Read MoreNintendo Switch has 36 “million-seller” games. That includes Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but it also counts surprise hits like Clubhouse Games.GamesBeat, category-/Computers & Electronics/Consumer Electronics/Game Systems & Consoles, category-/Games/Computer & Video Games, Nintendo, Nintendo Switch  |
| Nintendo sold 10.6 million copies of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe last year Posted: 06 May 2021 01:42 AM PDT  Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is one of gaming’s true behemoths. The 2017 release even dwarves some of 2020’s biggest releases.Read MoreMario Kart 8 Deluxe is one of gaming’s true behemoths. The 2017 release even dwarves some of 2020’s biggest releases.GamesBeat, category-/Computers & Electronics/Consumer Electronics/Game Systems & Consoles, category-/Games/Computer & Video Games/Driving & Racing Games, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Nintendo, Nintendo Switch  |
| Nintendo Switch hits 84.59 million units sold, with 28.8 million sold this past year Posted: 06 May 2021 12:43 AM PDT  The Nintendo Switch hybrid game console has sold more tha 84.59 million units to date, including 28.8 million in the past year.Read MoreThe Nintendo Switch hybrid game console has sold more tha 84.59 million units to date, including 28.8 million in the past year.GamesBeat, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, category-/Computers & Electronics/Consumer Electronics/Game Systems & Consoles, category-/Games/Computer & Video Games, DeanBeat News, Nintendo, Nintendo Switch, Switch  |
| Posted: 05 May 2021 07:59 PM PDT  By Scott Shackelford, Indiana University The FBI has the authority right now to access privately owned computers without their owners' knowledge or consent, and to delete software. It's part of a government effort to contain the continuing attacks on corporate networks running Microsoft Exchange software, and it's an unprecedented intrusion that's raising legal questions about just how far the government can go. On April 9, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas approved a search warrant allowing the U.S. Department of Justice to carry out the operation. The software the FBI is deleting is malicious code installed by hackers to take control of a victim's computer. Hackers have used the code to access vast amounts of private email messages and to launch ransomware attacks. The authority the Justice Department relied on and the way the FBI carried out the operation set important precedents. They also raise questions about the power of courts to regulate cybersecurity without the consent of the owners of the targeted computers. As a cybersecurity scholar, I have studied this type of cybersecurity, dubbed active defense, and how the public and private sectors have relied on each other for cybersecurity for years. Public-private cooperation is critical for managing the wide range of cyber threats facing the U.S. But it poses challenges, including determining how far the government can go in the name of national security. It's also important for Congress and the courts to oversee this balancing act.  Exchange server hack Since at least January 2021, hacking groups have been using zero-day exploits – meaning previously unknown vulnerabilities – in Microsoft Exchange to access email accounts. The hackers used this access to insert web shells, software that allows them to remotely control the compromised systems and networks. Tens of thousands of email users and organizations have been affected. One result has been a series of ransomware attacks, which encrypt victims' files and hold the keys to decrypt them for ransom. On March 2, 2021, Microsoft announced that a hacking group code named Hafnium had been using multiple zero-day exploits to install web shells with unique file names and paths. This makes it challenging for administrators to remove the malicious code, even with the tools and patches Microsoft and cybersecurity firms have released to assist the victims. A man stands in front of a wall covered with computer displays showing maps of the world Cybersecurity firm FireEye has been responding to a barrage of cyberattacks, including several targeting the widely used corporate email software Microsoft Exchange. AP Photo/Nathan Ellgren The FBI is accessing hundreds of these mail servers in corporate networks. The search warrant allows the FBI to access the web shells, enter the previously discovered password for a web shell, make a copy for evidence, and then delete the web shell. The FBI, though, was not authorized to remove any other malware that hackers might have installed during the breach or otherwise access the contents of the servers. What makes this case unique is both the scope of the FBI's actions to remove the web shells and the unprecedented intrusion into privately owned computers without the owners' consent. The FBI undertook the operation without consent because of the large number of unprotected systems throughout U.S. networks and the urgency of the threat. The action demonstrates the Justice Department's commitment to using "all of our legal tools," Assistant Attorney General John Demers said in a statement. The total number of compromised firms remains murky given that the figure is redacted in the court documents, but it could be as many as 68,000 Exchange servers, which would potentially affect millions of email users. New malware attacks on Microsoft Exchange servers continue to surface, and the FBI is continuing to undertake court-authorized action to remove the malicious code. Active defense The shift toward a more active U.S. cybersecurity strategy began under the Obama administration with the establishment of U.S. Cyber Command in 2010. The emphasis at the time remained on deterrence by denial, meaning making computers harder to hack. This includes using a layered defense, also known as defense in depth, to make it more difficult, expensive and time-consuming to break into networks. The alternative is to go after hackers, a strategy dubbed defend forward. Since 2018, the U.S. government has ramped up defend forward, as seen in U.S. actions against Russian groups in the 2018 and 2020 election cycles in which U.S. Cyber Command personnel identified and disrupted Russian online propaganda campaigns. The Biden administration has continued this trend, coupled with new sanctions on Russia in response to the SolarWinds espionage campaign. That attack, which the U.S. government attributes to hackers connected to Russian intelligence services, used vulnerabilities in commercial software to break into U.S. government agencies. This new FBI action similarly pushes the envelope of active defense, in this case to clean up the aftermath of domestic breaches, though without the awareness – or consent – of the affected organizations.  The law and the courts The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act generally makes it illegal to access a computer without authorization. This law, though, does not apply to the government. The FBI has the power to remove malicious code from private computers without permission thanks to a change in 2016 to Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. This revision was designed in part to enable the U.S. government to more easily battle botnets and aid other cybercrime investigations in situations where the perpetrators' locations remained unknown. It permits the FBI to access computers outside the jurisdiction of a search warrant. This action highlights the precedent, and power, of courts becoming de facto cybersecurity regulators that can empower the Department of Justice to clean up large-scale deployments of malicious code of the kind seen in the Exchange hack. In 2017, for example, the FBI made use of the expanded Rule 41 to take down a global botnet that harvested victims information and used their computers to send spam emails. Important legal issues remain unresolved with the FBI's current operation. One is the question of liability. What if, for example, the privately owned computers were damaged in the FBI's process of removing the malicious code? Another issue is how to balance private property rights against national security needs in cases like this. What is clear, though, is that under this authority the FBI could hack into computers at will, and without the need for a specific search warrant. National security and the private sector Rob Joyce, NSA's cybersecurity director, said that cybersecurity is national security. This statement may seem uncontroversial. But it does portend a sea change in the government's responsibility for cybersecurity, which has largely been left up to the private sector. Much of U.S. critical infrastructure, which includes computer networks, is in private hands. Yet companies have not always made the necessary investments to protect their customers. This raises the question of whether there has been a market failure in cybersecurity where economic incentives haven't been sufficient to result in adequate cyber defenses. With the FBI's actions, the Biden administration may be implicitly acknowledging such a market failure. Article from theconversation.com  |
| U.S. Senate committee to consider technology research spending bill Posted: 05 May 2021 07:40 PM PDT  Join Transform 2021 this July 12-16. Register for the AI event of the year. (Reuters) — A U.S. legislative proposal to allocate about $110 billion for basic and advanced technology research and science in the face of rising competitive pressure from China will be debated by the Senate Commerce Committee on May 12, sources said on Wednesday. T…Read More(Reuters) — A U.S. legislative proposal to allocate about $110 billion for basic and advanced technology research and science in the face of rising competitive pressure from China will be debated by the Senate Commerce Committee on May 12, sources said on Wednesday. The bipartisan "Endless Frontier" bill would authorize most of the money, $100 AI, Cloud, Enterprise, VB Home Page, advanced energy, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, category-/Law & Government/Government, category-/News/Politics, Congress, IT spend, quantum computing, semiconductors, tech spending  |
| Jeff Bezos sells more than $2.4B in Amazon stock Posted: 05 May 2021 06:41 PM PDT  Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. (GeekWire File Photo / Kevin Lisota) Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos sold off more than $2.4 billion in Amazon shares this week, new regulatory filings show. Bezos said in 2017 that he was selling $1 billion a year to fund his Blue Origin space venture, but he has been increasing the size and frequency of the stock sales recently. He sold more than $7 billion last year. This is his first stock sale of 2021. Amazon's stock price soared last year to record-highs amid the pandemic as the company's e-commerce, cloud computing, and advertising arms have boomed. Shares have increased slightly thus far this year, trading Wednesday at around $3,270. Significant stock sales by top corporate executives are often made based on a schedule set out in advance. Bezos is the world's richest person, currently with a net worth of $191 billion, according to Bloomberg. Bezos owned 14% of Amazon as of Feb. 16, according to the company's annual proxy statement. He is stepping down as CEO later this year and will be replaced by Amazon Web Services chief Andy Jassy. Bezos will remain as executive chairman. Under his divorce settlement with MacKenzie Scott in 2019, the Amazon founder received 75% of the couple's Amazon shares and retained voting authority for remaining shares. Following the divorce, Scott last year gave away more than $5 billion of her vast wealth to a variety of organizations. Scott also signed The Giving Pledge, a commitment to give away the majority of her fortune to charity. She is ranked No. 21 on Bloomberg's list with a net worth of $57.8 billion. Bezos has increased his philanthropy in recent years, including a $10 billion climate change initiative and the $2 billion Day 1 Fund, which supports homeless services and early childhood education. Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos sold off more than $2.4 billion in Amazon shares this week, new regulatory filings show. Bezos said in 2017 that he was selling $1 billion a year to fund his Blue Origin space venture, but he has been increasing the size and frequency of the stock sales recently. He sold more than $7 billion last year. This is his first stock sale of 2021. Amazon's stock price soared last year to record-highs amid the pandemic as the company's e-commerce, cloud computing, and advertising arms have boomed. Shares have increased slightly thus far this year, trading… Read MoreAmazon  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Twitter’s latest robo-nag will flag “harmful” language before you post Posted: 05 May 2021 04:45 PM PDT  Enlarge / Before you tweet, you might be asked if you meant to be so rude. (credit: Getty Images / Sam Machkovech) Want to know exactly what Twitter’s fleet of text-combing, dictionary-parsing bots defines as “mean”? Starting any day now, you’ll have instant access to that data—at least, whenever a stern auto-moderator says you’re not tweeting politely. On Wednesday, members of Twitter’s product-design team confirmed that a new automatic prompt will begin rolling out for all Twitter users, regardless of platform and device, that activates when a post’s language crosses Twitter’s threshold of “potentially harmful or offensive language.” This follows a number of limited-user tests of the notices beginning in May of last year. Soon, any robo-moderated tweets will be interrupted with a notice asking, “Want to review this before tweeting?” Earlier tests of this feature, unsurprisingly, had their share of issues. “The algorithms powering the [warning] prompts struggled to capture the nuance in many conversations and often didn’t differentiate between potentially offensive language, sarcasm, and friendly banter,” Twitter’s announcement states. The news post clarifies that Twitter’s systems now account for, among other things, how often two accounts interact with each other—meaning, I’ll likely get a flag for sending curse words and insults to a celebrity I never talk to on Twitter, but I would likely be in the clear sending those same sentences via Twitter to friends or Ars colleagues. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments Follows Twitter’s effort to make you read the news before you share it.Biz & IT, automoderation, moderation, social media, Twitter  |
| Dell patches a 12-year-old privilege escalation vulnerability Posted: 05 May 2021 04:45 PM PDT  Enlarge / At least three companies have reported the dbutil_2_3.sys security problems to Dell over the past two years. (credit: Blogtrepreneur via Flickr) Yesterday, infosec research firm SentinelLabs revealed twelve year old flaws in Dell’s firmware updater, DBUtil 2.3. The vulnerable firmware updater has been installed by default on hundreds of millions of Dell systems since 2009. The five high severity flaws SentinelLabs discovered and reported to Dell lurk in the dbutil_2_3.sys module, and have been rounded up under a single CVE tracking number, CVE-2021-21551. There are two memory corruption issues and two lack of input validation issues, all of which can lead to local privilege escalation, and a code logic issue which could lead to a denial of service. A hypothetical attacker abusing these vulnerabilities can escalate the privileges of another process, or bypass security controls to write directly to system storage. This offers multiple routes to the ultimate goal of local kernel-level access—a step even higher than Administrator or “root” access—to the entire system. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments Dell firmware update driver 2.3 can be exploited to gain kernel-level privilege.Biz & IT, Tech, dell, firmware update, infosec, patch, update  |
| IoT is critical to enterprise digital transformation, Omdia says Posted: 05 May 2021 04:45 PM PDT  IoT platform growth set to boom, as industry survey discloses uptick in critical IoT deployments.Read MoreIoT platform growth set to boom, as industry survey discloses uptick in critical IoT deployments.Big Data, Cloud, Enterprise, Security, VB Home Page, AWS, category-/Business & Industrial, category-/Computers & Electronics/Enterprise Technology, Google Cloud, Internet of things, Microsoft Azure, Omdia  |
| Google just announced a rare exciting update for Android tablets Posted: 05 May 2021 04:45 PM PDT  The 2021 iPad Pro delivered a huge blow to Android tablet makers. The iPad Pro hardly had any competition in the market, and the M1-powered iPad Pro puts even more distance between Apple and the flagship Android tablets. The M1 processor offers performance well beyond what's available from the best Android tablets out there, and it's unlikely we'll see a true iPad Pro rival from the Android camp anytime soon. That's on top of the software differences, as Google has largely ignored Android tablets in recent years. But Google does have a software upgrade in mind for Android tablets, having just announced a feature that many people might not even need. But it could also be the kind of feature that many others might appreciate right now. Unfortunately, it's not the big makeover you might have wanted for your Android tablet. Today’s Top DealShoppers are swarming Amazon to get the Roomba 675 robot vacuum while it’s only $199!Price: $199.00
With I/O 2021 just a few days away, Google chose a peculiar moment to announce Entertainment Space, the new Android feature you'll see on select tablets going forward. For some reason, the announcement isn't worthy of an I/O reveal. And in some ways, it might be perceived as a defeat. Entertainment Space is all about entertainment, and bringing the feature to Android tablets relegates these devices to one duty: Providing entertainment. Comparatively, iPadOS offers a richer tablet computing experience. iPads can replace traditional computers for entertainment purposes, in addition to serving entertainment. It's not just the iPad Pros that target more demanding consumers. The iPad Air has the same processor as the iPhone 12 series and runs the same software as the iPad Pros. Google does say that Android tablet use has gone up over the last year, with 30% more people using these devices. The likely reason that happened is the coronavirus pandemic, which forced people to spend more time indoors and compete for screens. Tablets and laptops were used for school and work from home, but also for consuming entertainment. Google's new Entertainment Space for Android tablets. Image source: Google The new Entertainment Space will look a lot like the Google TV experience you'd get on the last-gen Google Chromecast. But it's not just access to your favorite streaming apps that Entertainment Space will offer. It also includes recommended apps, games, and books in a single place, which could be the kind of experience some tablet users might enjoy. Google launched Kids Space last year, targeting tablet users under 9. The Entertainment Space might cater to new Android users who might appreciate accessing all their entertainment in one place, without moving back and forth between apps. It's the kind of feature that could be quite useful to less tech-savvy individuals who are still getting used to managing smartphones and tablets. Entertainment Space is a one-stop, personalized home for all your favorite movies, shows, videos, games and books. You'll save time and avoid having to hop between apps to try to figure out what to do, whether it's to watch, play or read. Once you sign in to your subscription apps, Entertainment Space will show you your content in one place and tailored for you. And if you want to share your tablet, everyone in the family can have their own personalized profile. Entertainment Space is also a way for Google to better learn what sort of entertainment you like. Entertainment Space will include three tabs: Watch, Games, and Read. The Watch tab will include a Continue Watching row, personalized and trending recommendations, and Google TV and YouTube support. Signing into streaming apps will bring them all over to the Watch tab. A similar interface is available for the Games tab, which includes a Continue Playing row. It also supports Instant Play, which lets you play games without downloading the entire app. The Read tab provides access to your favorite boots, including audiobook versions. Entertainment Space will not be ready to roll out on all Android devices. It starts with Walmart onn tablets this month. It'll then roll out globally on new and select Android tablets from Lenovo, Sharp, and others. Today’s Top DealAirPods Pro are finally back in stock at Amazon… at the lowest price of 2021!Price: $197.00 But Google does have a software upgrade in mind for Android tablets, having just announced a feature that many people might not even need. But it could also be the kind of feature that many others might appreciate right now. Unfortunately, it's not the big makeover you might have wanted for your Android tablet. With I/O 2021 just a few days away, Google chose a peculiar moment to announce Entertainment Space, the new Android feature you'll see on select tablets going forward. For some reason, the announcement isn't worthy of an I/O reveal. And in some ways, it might be perceived as a defeat. Entertainment Space is all about entertainment, and bringing the feature to Android tablets relegates these devices to one duty: Providing entertainment. Comparatively, iPadOS offers a richer tablet computing experience. iPads can replace traditional computers for entertainment purposes, in addition to serving entertainment. It's not just the iPad Pros that target more demanding consumers. The iPad Air has the same processor as the iPhone 12 series and runs the same software as the iPad Pros. Google does say that Android tablet use has gone up over the last year, with 30% more people using these devices. The likely reason that happened is the coronavirus pandemic, which forced people to spend more time indoors and compete for screens. Tablets and laptops were used for school and work from home, but also for consuming entertainment. The new Entertainment Space will look a lot like the Google TV experience you'd get on the last-gen Google Chromecast. But it's not just access to your favorite streaming apps that Entertainment Space will offer. It also includes recommended apps, games, and books in a single place, which could be the kind of experience some tablet users might enjoy. Google launched Kids Space last year, targeting tablet users under 9. The Entertainment Space might cater to new Android users who might appreciate accessing all their entertainment in one place, without moving back and forth between apps. It’s the kind of feature that could be quite useful to less tech-savvy individuals who are still getting used to managing smartphones and tablets. A similar interface is available for the Games tab, which includes a Continue Playing row. It also supports Instant Play, which lets you play games without downloading the entire app. The Read tab provides access to your favorite boots, including audiobook versions. Entertainment Space will not be ready to roll out on all Android devices. It starts with Walmart onn tablets this month. It'll then roll out globally on new and select Android tablets from Lenovo, Sharp, and others.Android, Entertainment Space, google  |
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