Double KO! Capcom's Street Fighter V installs hidden rootkit on PCs A fresh update for Capcom's Street Fighter V for PCs includes a knock-out move: a secret rootkit that gives any installed application kernel-level privileges. This means any malicious software on the system can poke a dodgy driver installed by SFV to completely take over the Windows machine. Capcom claims it uses the driver to stop players from hacking the high-def beat 'em up to cheat. Unfortunately, the code is so badly designed, it opens up a full-blown local backdoor. The Register
North Korea accidentally reveals it only has 28 websites On Monday afternoon, a security engineer named Matt Bryant stumbled upon a part of the Internet that is usually hidden from most of the world: a list of websites available to people with Internet access in North Korea. The total number of sites was just 28. Bryant's list includes every site ending in .kp, which is the country code associated with North Korea. NPR
97 percent of the top 1,000 companies suffer from credential compromise Data breaches and credential compromise are not new. After all, 2014 was known as the "year of the data breach". Last year was similarly dubbed the "year of the breach". In 2016, we have witnessed even yet more data breaches made public, including LinkedIn, MySpace and Dropbox. Data breaches are no longer an aberration; they are the norm. Digital Shadows
Akamai kicked journalist Brian Krebs' site off its servers after he was hit by a 'record' cyberattack The cloud-hosting giant Akamai Technologies has dumped the website run by journalist Brian Krebs from its servers after the site came under a "record" cyberattack. "It's looking likely that KrebsOnSecurity will be offline for a while," Krebs tweeted Thursday. "Akamai's kicking me off their network tonight." Business Insider
Microsoft ends Tuesday patches Yesterday was a big day for Patch Tuesday. It was the last traditional Windows Patch Tuesday as Microsoft is moving to a new patching release model. In the future, patches will be bundled together and users will no longer be able to pick and choose which updates to install. Furthermore, these new 'monthly update packs' will be combined, so for instance, the November update will include all the patches from October as well. Help Net Security
The state of 4K gaming: What you need to know, from pricing to performance needs 4K gaming started life as a hobby for the one percent and, well, you still need a beast of a PC to push all those pixels. Fortunately, in the fast-paced world of technology, today's elite options trickle down to tomorrow's mainstream hardware in the blink of an eye. Over the past few months, new graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD hit the streets, each representing a two-generation technological jump over prior options. PCWorld
World's first hydrogen train to go into service in Germany The hydrogen, or hydrail, train is set to run on the Buxtehude-Bremervörde-Bremerhaven-Cuxhaven line in Lower Saxony starting in December 2017, Die Welt reported on Tuesday. The train - called the "Coradia iLint" - has been developed over the past two years by French company Alstom and was presented on Tuesday at the Berlin InnoTrans trade show. The Local
Probe of leaked U.S. NSA hacking tools examines operative's 'mistake' A U.S. investigation into a leak of hacking tools used by the National Security Agency is focusing on a theory that one of its operatives carelessly left them available on a remote computer and Russian hackers found them, four people with direct knowledge of the probe told Reuters. The tools, which enable hackers to exploit software flaws in computer and communications systems from vendors such as Cisco Systems and Fortinet Inc, were dumped onto public websites last month by a group calling itself Shadow Brokers. Reuters
Canary in the code mine Rusty Justice doesn't think about Michael Bloomberg very often. But when he does – even if it's just for a moment – it's like remembering the gloating rich kid who stole his lunch. The distaste started when the New York City billionaire donated $50 million to the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign back in 2011, and continued when he poured in another $30 million this year. Rusty, you see, runs a land-moving company in Eastern Kentucky, and the anti-coal movement is playing a big role in systematically closing down the industry he's worked around all his life. BackChannel
What 'optimization' really means in games Dive into a forum discussion about a new PC game, and one word will inevitably show up: optimization. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided? "I think this game is not optimized AT ALL!" writes one player on Steam. Metro: Last Light? "In a few words optimization in this game is terrible," writes another. Complaints about bad optimization are often shorthand for 'this game doesn't run well on my PC.' But is that performance really the fault of the game's programming not being written as efficiently as possible? PC Gamer
How to power up graphene implants without frying cells In the future, our health may be monitored and maintained by tiny sensors and drug dispensers, deployed within the body and made from graphene – one of the strongest, lightest materials in the world. Graphene is composed of a single sheet of carbon atoms, linked together like razor-thin chicken wire, and its properties may be tuned in countless ways, making it a versatile material for tiny, next-generation implants. MIT
The 2016 top programming languages Welcome to IEEE Spectrum's third interactive ranking of the most popular programming languages. As it's impossible to look over the shoulder of every programmer, Spectrum uses various metrics as proxies for gauging the current use of a language. Working with data journalist Nick Diakopoulos,from 10 online sources we've chosen 12 metrics, each one of which gives insight along a different axis of popularity. Combining the metrics produces a single ranking. IEEE Spectrum
Indonesia struggles to tap volcano power Columns of steam shoot from the ground at an Indonesian power plant sitting in the shadow of an active volcano, as energy is tapped from the red-hot underbelly of the archipelago. Pipes zig-zag up rugged mountainsides covered in tea plantations, carrying steam from the Earth's core to power enormous, electricity-generating turbines at the Wayang Windu facility on Java island. Indonesia, a seismically-active island chain studded with scores of volcanoes, holds an estimated 40 percent of the world's geothermal energy reserves... Phys.org
Ubisoft on Vivendi takeover threat, reinventing Assassin's Creed, bringing back Beyond Good & Evil You may have noticed that Ubisoft has been doing a lot of navel gazing recently. In part, this is because the French developer and publisher is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. But it's also because it is battling an unwanted takeover attempt from media conglomerate Vivendi. In 2015, Vivendi purchased stakes in Gameloft and Ubisoft--both companies that were founded by Michel and Yves Guillemot, among others. GameSpot
What it's like to manage a gaming community on fire Micah Whipple didn't believe in Real ID. It was unveiled in 2010 as a new social initiative in the Blizzard forums, effectively forcing players to register their real names instead of Battle.net aliases to cut down on the witch hunts and treachery that so often define anonymous, online public spaces. Whipple thought the policy would be unsustainable and unenforceable, but as a World of Warcraft community manager it was his job to go to bat for it. PC Gamer
Jawbone hasn't paid one of its key business partners and has almost no inventory left, sources say Jawbone, the richly valued maker of wearable gadgets and wireless speakers, appears to be on increasingly shaky financial footing as it struggles to pay vendors and keep inventory in stock. Jawbone abruptly ended its relationship with the customer-service agency NexRep earlier this month after Jawbone failed to make payments... Business Insider
A shocking amount of e-waste recycling is a complete sham Until recently, I had never really thought about what happens to my old electronics. I took them to a community e-waste recycling drive, or dropped my old phone in a box somewhere, and I assumed my stuff was recycled. An alarming portion of the time this is not actually the case, according to the results of a project that used GPS trackers to follow e-waste over the course of two years. Motherboard