Under Armour data breach affects 150 million MyFitnessPal users

Under Armour has just disclosed that 150 million MyFitnessPal accounts were affected by a security breach. The company became aware of it on March 25th, and deduced that unauthorized parties had access to the accounts since late February 2018 — but only users’ usernames, email addresses, and hashed passwords were exposed.

Government-issued identification like driver’s licenses or social security numbers weren’t included since the company doesn’t collect that information. Under Armour also stated that payment data (including credit cards) weren’t exposed because that is collected and processed separately.

Today, four days after discovering the breach, the company told MyFitnessPal users through email and app notifications, recommending ways to safeguard their account and information as well as requiring them to change passwords. Under Armour announced it had acquired MyFitnessPal in early 2015 for $475 million. We’ve reached out to Under Armour for comment and to determine whether the breach extends to data for the company’s other apps like MapMyRun.

Source: Under Armour

From pranks to nuclear sabotage, this is the history of malware

Since the dawn of modern computing, software has been as capable as the programmers who created it. Their intentions became its capabilities, and that’s brought us a world of wondrous and powerful applications across a wide variety of platforms and mediums. Along the way, it’s also lead to the creation of incredibly malicious, and in some cases downright dangerous, software. We are, of course, talking about malware.

We’ve all come across malware at some point. You might’ve been spammed during the heyday of adware and popups, faced off against a nasty trojan that tried to steal your identity, or even dealt with a system-paralyzing piece of blackmailing ransomware. Today, millions upon millions of unique programs are designed to target your system, your files, and your wallet. While they all have different footprints and trajectories, they all have their roots in humble beginnings.

To understand malware, you must return to the digital primordial soup that would one day evolve into the millions of nefarious programs we face off against today. This is the history of malware, and of the techniques used over decades to combat it.

An innocent birth

The modern world faces criminal and nation state hacking that could threaten everyone’s way of life. Yet the early days of malware were free of malice. Back then, the intention was to see what was truly possible with computing, not to harm, steal, or manipulate.

The idea for a virus, or a self-replicating string of code, was first coined by computing visionary John Von Neumman. In 1949, he postulated the potential for a “self-reproducing automata” that would be able to pass along its programming to a new version of itself.

‘I’m the Creeper:
Catch me if you can.’

The first known recorded instance of a computer virus was the Creeper Worm, developed by Robert H. Thomas in 1971. The first iteration of Creeper couldn’t clone itself, but it was able to move from one system to another. It would then display the message, ‘I’m the Creeper: Catch me if you can.’

While it seems likely the first self-replicating code and its creator are lost, the first recorded instance of such software is the Creeper Worm, developed by Robert H. Thomas in 1971 at BBN Technologies. Creeper ran on the TENEX operating system and was impressively sophisticated for its time. Unlike many of its successors, which would require physical mediums to spread their payloads, Creeper was able to move between DEC’s PDP-10 mainframe computers over the earliest iteration of the ARPANET, a progenitor network of the internet the world would come to adopt in later years. The first iteration of Creeper couldn’t clone itself, but it was able to move from one system to another. It would then display the message, “I’m the Creeper: Catch me if you can.”

A new version of Creeper was later created by Thomas’ colleague at BBN Technologies, Ray Thomlinson – better known as the inventor of email. It did duplicate itself, leading to an early understanding of the problem such viruses, or worms, could cause. How do you control them once you send them off? In the end, Thomlinson created another program called Reaper, which moved around the network and deleted any copies of Creeper it found. Thomlinson didn’t know it, but he had created the very first piece of anti-virus software, starting an arms race between hackers and security professionals that continues to this day.

Creeper, although mocking in its message, was not designed to cause problems for the system. Indeed, as Thomlinson himself explained to computing historian, Georgei Dalakob, “The creeper application was not exploiting a deficiency of the operating system. The research effort was intended to develop mechanisms for bringing applications to other machines with intention of moving the application to the most efficient computer for its task.”

Peaks and Troughs

In the years that followed the proliferation and subsequent deletion of the Creeper virus from those ancient mainframe systems, a few other pieces of malware appeared and iterated upon the idea. The self-replicating Rabbit virus was created by an unknown – but supposedly, very much fired – programmer in 1974, and was followed shortly afterwards by the Animal virus, which took the form of a quiz game.

Malware creation then went through one of its periodic developmental droughts. But that all changed in 1982, when Elk Cloner made its appearance, and a new wave of viruses began to rise.

“With the invention of the PC, people started writing boot sector viruses that were spread on floppies,” Zone Lab’s Skyler King told Digital Trends. “People who were pirating games or sharing them on floppies [were being infected].”

Elk Cloner was the first to use that attack vector, though it was completely benign, and not thought to have spread far. Its mantle was picked up four years later by the Brain virus. That piece of software was technically an anti-piracy measure created by two Pakistani brothers, though it had the effect of making some infected disks unusable due to timeout errors.

“Those were kind of the first viruses as we would consider them,” King said. “And they were propagating so that if you put in a floppy, they could copy to it, and spread that way.” The change in attack vector was noteworthy, because targeting a system from a different angle would become the hallmark of new malware in the years that followed.

“Things kind of shifted over to the Unix side with the mainstream use of the internet and universities, like the Morris worm in November 1988,” King continued. “That was interesting, because the Morris worm was [written by] the son of the head of the NSA […] He found a flaw in two protocols that were used in Unix. The flaw in SMTP, the mail protocol that allowed you to send email, [was used to] propagate it, and within a day it took down the internet as it existed in 1988.”

The Morris worm was said to be originally designed to map the internet, but it bombarded computers with traffic, and multiple infections could slow them to a crawl. It is ultimately credited with bringing down around 6,000 systems. Robert Morris, the worm’s creator, became the first person ever tried under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986. He was sentenced to three years of probation and fined $10,050. Today, Morris is an active researcher of computer network architectures and tenured professor at MIT.

The Morris Worm became the proof of concept for a variety of other pieces of malware from that same period, all of which targeted boot sectors. It started the next wave in virus development. Many variants of that idea were collected under the “Stoned,” label, with notable entries like Whale, Tequila, and the infamous Michelangelo, which annually created panic in organizations with infected systems.

The last days of summer

For the first decades of their existence, even the prolific and damaging viruses were of relatively benign design. “They were just people having fun trying to get street cred in the underground scene to show what they could do,” King told Digital Trends.

Defensive methods were still far behind the virus writers, however. Even simple malware like the ILoveYou Worm — which made its appearance in the year 2000 — could cause unprecedented damage to systems worldwide.

Malwarebytes‘ VP of technology, Pedro Bustamante, remembers it well. “It was a visual basic script that was a mass mailer that would auto-attach a script, and the [anti-virus firms] weren’t ready to do a lot of script based detection back then,” he said.

Filipino programmer Onel de Guzman is most often credited with the worm’s creation, though he has always denied developing its attack vector, and suggests that he may have released the worm by accident. Some rumors suggest the real culprit behind its creation was a friend of his, Michael Buen, who tricked Guzman into releasing it because of a love rivalry. The ILoveYou Worm caused over $15 billion in damage globally.

“We were on lockdown at Panda labs for like three days for that one. People didn’t sleep.”

“We were on lockdown at Panda labs for like three days for that one,” Bustamante continued. “People didn’t sleep. That was the epicenter of that script kiddie movement where anyone could create a script and make a mass mailer and it would have a huge propagation. Massive number of infections. That was typically only possible with an advanced network worm back in the day.”

Zone Labs’ King faced similarly sleepless nights with some other malware spreading across the growing internet during that time, citing the likes of Code Red and SQL Slammer as particularly problematic.

While worms and viruses had security experts pulling their hair out, and company executives scared of the millions or billions of dollars of damage they were doing, nobody knew that the malware wars were only just getting started. They were about to take a dark and dangerous turn.

No longer a game

As internet use grew, advertising networks started to earn money online, and dot-coms raked in investor cash. The internet transformed from a small community known by few into a widespread, mainstream avenue of communication, and a legitimate way to make millions of dollars. The motive for malware followed, shifting from curiosity to greed.

Kaspersky Cyberthreat real-time map shows cyberattacks taking place right now throughout the world.

“When more people started using the internet and people were looking at ads online and companies were out there making money on ad clicks, that’s when you started seeing the rise of adware and spyware,” King continued. “You started to see viruses that ran on individual computers that sent out spam to try and buy into products, or adware that used clickfraud that showed ads for things so that it would simulate you clicking on the link, so they’d make money.”

Organized crime soon realized that clever programmers could make established underground enterprises a lot of money. With that, the malware scene turned several shades darker. Prepackaged malware kits created by criminal organizations began to appear online. Famous ones like MPack were ultimately used to infect everything from individual home systems, to banking mainframes. Their level of sophistication, and link to real-world criminals, up the stakes for security researchers.

“That’s when we started seeing some of the gangs that were behind some of these more modern attacks and malware. It was scary.”

“We discovered MPack at Panda Security, and we did an investigation and a big paper that was all over the news,” Malwarebytes’ Bustamante explained. “That’s when we started seeing some of the gangs that were behind some of these more modern attacks and malware. It was scary. Most researchers at Panda said that they didn’t want their name anywhere near the report.”

But the report was released, and it highlighted how deeply malware and organized criminal gangs had become.

“It was a lot of Russian gangs. We had pictures of their gatherings. It was like a company,” Bustamante said. “They had people doing marketing, executives, company get togethers, competitions for programmers who wrote the best malware, tracking affiliates, they had everything. It was amazing. They were making more money than we were.”

That money was shared with talented programmers, ensuring the organizations attracted the best talent they could. “We started seeing pictures of mafia looking guys from Eastern Europe giving away fancy cars to the programmers, and suitcases full of money,” he said.

Vulnerabilities exploited

The pursuit of profit lead to more sophisticated malware and new attack vectors. The Zeus malware, which appeared in 2006, used basic social engineering to trick people into clicking email links, ultimately letting the creator steal victims’ login information, financial details, PIN codes, and more. It even facilitated so-called “man in the browser,” attacks, where malware can request security information at the point of login, harvesting even more information from victims.

News clips showing various malware through the years.

Those creating malware also learned they didn’t have to use the software themselves, and could simply sell it to others. The MPack kit Bustamante came across at Panda Security in the mid ’00s was a perfect example. It was updated month to month since its early creation, and regularly resold. Even the alleged author of Zeus, Russian-born Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev, began to sell his malware, before handing off control of the Zeus malware platform to another programmer. He’s still at large today. The FBI has a bounty on information leading to Bogachev’s arrest, offering as much as $3 million to anyone who can help catch him.

By 2007, more malware was being created every year than had existed in the entire history of malware, and each new mass attack fueled the fire.

Selling pre-packaged malware the way that Bogachev did marked another shift in malware creation. Now that malware could be used to make money, and virus writers could make money selling it as a tool, it became more professional. Malware was crafted into a product, commonly termed an exploit kit.

“It was really sold as a business,” Zone Labs’ King told Digital Trends. “They [offered] support, software updates to the latest exploits, it was pretty amazing.”

By 2007, more malware was being created every year than had existed in the entire history of malware, and mass attacks on the ever-growing number of computers drove business. This spurred the rise of large-scale botnets which were offered for rent to those wishing to conduct denial of service attacks. But end-users could only be tricked into clicking links for so long. As they became more educated, the exploit kits and their authors needed to evolve again.

“[Malware writers] had to come up with a way to install the threat automatically,” MalwareBytes CEO Marcin Kleczynski told Digital Trends. “That’s where the exploit techniques, social engineering, and macros in Powerpoint and Excel started getting way more [sophisticated].”

MalwareBytes CEO Marcin Kleczynski. MalwareBytes

Fortunately for the malware authors, websites and offline software began to adopt Web 2.0 principles. User interaction and complex content creation were becoming far more prevalent. To adapt malware writers started targeting Internet Explorer, Office applications, and Adobe Reader, among many others.

“The more complex software gets, the more it can do, the more engineers working on it […] the more mistake prone that software is and the more vulnerabilities you’ll find over time,” Kleczynski said. “As software gets more complex and Web 2.0 happened, and Windows kept evolving, it got more complex and more vulnerable to the outside world.”

By 2010, it seemed that not-for-profit malware had all but died out, with for-profit being the near-exclusive motivation for crafting it. That, it turned out, was wrong. The world abruptly learned that organized crime was nothing compared to the most dangerous malware, crafted in secret by nations.

Digital warfare

The first example of a nation flexing its military might online was the Aurora attack on Google. The search giant, long standing as one of the world’s most prominent digital entities, found itself under sustained attack at the close of 2009 by hackers with ties to the Chinese Liberation Army. When the rest of the world learned about it in January 2010, it marked a turning point in what experts realized malware, and its authors, were capable of.

How Stuxnet Worked K-Lopa/IEEE Spectrum

The attack targeted dozens of high-level tech firms like Adobe, Rackspace, and Symantec, and were thought to be an attempt to modify the source code of various software suites. Later reports suggested it was a Chinese counterintelligence operation to discover U.S. wiretap targets. As ambitious and impressive as that attack was, however, it was surpassed just months later.

“The cat really came out of the bag with Stuxnet,” Bustamante told Digital Trends. “Before that […] you could see it in certain attacks and in the things like Pakistan, India internet being cut down undersea, [but] Stuxnet is where the shit hit the fan, and everyone started freaking out.”

“Chaining together several zero-day vulnerabilities [in Stuxnet], really advanced targeting of specific nuclear facilities. It’s amazing. It’s the type of stuff that you would only see in a novel.”

Stuxnet was built to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program, and it worked. Even now, eight years after its appearance, security professionals speak of Stuxnet with a tone of awe. “Chaining together several zero-day vulnerabilities, really advanced targeting of specific nuclear facilities. It’s amazing,” Bustamante said. “It’s the type of stuff that you would only see in a novel.”

Kleczynski was just as impressed. “[…] if you look at exploits being used for an offensive cyber-security capability, it was a pretty damn good one. The [way it went after the] Siemens programmable logic computers? It was beautifully architected to destroy the centrifuges.”

Although no one claimed responsibility for Stuxnet in the years that followed, most security researchers think it the work of a combined U.S.-Israeli taskforce. That only seemed more likely when other revelations, like NSA hard drive firmware hacking, showed the true potential of nation state hackers.

The Stuxnet style of attack would soon become commonplace. Exploit kits continued to be a major attack vector in the years that followed, but as Bustamante told us in our interview, zero-day vulnerabilities chained together are now something that Malwarebytes and its contemporaries see every day.

That’s not all they see. There’s a new phenomenon with origins that can be traced almost back to the start of our story. It has caused no end of trouble as of late, and may well do so into the future.

Your money or your files

The very first ransomware attack technically happened as far back as 1989, with the AIDS Trojan. Sent out to AIDS researchers on an infected floppy disc, the malware would wait for the system to be booted 90 times before encrypting files and demanding a payment of $189 in cash, sent to a PO Box address in Panama.

Although that piece of malware was called a trojan at the time, the idea of forcibly obfuscating files, denying a user access to their own system, and demanding some form of payment to return it to normal, became the key components of ransomware. It began to resurface again in the mid-00s, but it was the growth of anonymous cryptocurrency Bitcoin that made ransomware common.

“If you infect someone with ransomware and ask them to deposit into a bank account, that account is going to get closed down pretty quick,” Zone Labs’ King explained. “But if you ask someone to deposit some bitcoin in a wallet, the consumers pay. There’s really no way to stop it.”

Ransomware developers make it easy for victims to purchase cryptocurrency and send it to them.

Considering how difficult it is to regulate bitcoin in everyday functions with legitimate uses, it makes sense that stopping it from being leveraged by criminals is even more so. Especially since people pay the ransoms. Just as with the exploit kits and the corporate structure that backs them, ransomware developers make it as easy as possible for victims to purchase cryptocurrency and send it to them.

But in the latter half of the teen years of the 21st century, we’ve started to see further evolution of these tactics, as once again those writing the malicious software have followed the money.

“What’s surprised me with ransomware is how quickly it went from you and I, to our companies,” Kleczynski said. “A year or two ago it was us who were getting infected, not Malwarebytes, not SAP, Oracle and so on. They’ve clearly seen the money and companies are willing to pay it.”

What’s next?

For most of the experts we spoke to, ransomware continues to be the big threat they’re concerned with. Zone Labs’ King was keen to talk about his company’s new anti-ransomware protections and how businesses needed to be aware of how dangerous the tactic was.

Kleczynski sees it as a hugely profitable model for malware writers, especially when you bring in the rise of infected Internet of Things devices, which have made up some of the largest botnets the world has ever seen.

Timelapse of a DDoS attack that took place in 2015 on Christmas Day.

Using British Airways’ website as an example, he asked the rhetorical question of how much it would be worth it for that company to maintain its online ticketing system if threatened. Would such a company be willing to pay an extorter $50,000 if its website were to go down for even a few hours? Would it pay $10,000 at the mere threat of such an action?

With the potential to lose millions in sales, or even billions in market value should stock prices react to such an attack, it’s not hard to imagine a world where that’s a regular occurrence. To Kleczynski, this is just the old world finally catching up with the new. It’s the organized crime tactics of yesteryear being applied to a modern world.

“Today, it’s ‘would you like to purchase some ransomware insurance? It’d be a shame if your website went down for 24 hours.’”

“This used to just be racketeering. ‘Would you like to purchase some fire insurance? It would be a shame if something happened to your building,’” he said. “Today, it’s ‘would you like to purchase some ransomware insurance? It’d be a shame if your website went down for 24 hours.’”

That criminal involvement still scares MalwareBytes’ Bustamante, who tells us that the company regularly sees threats to its developers hidden in malware code.

As concerned as he and the company are about their own personal safety though, he sees the next wave as something more than just ransomware. He sees it as an assault on our ability to perceive the world around us.

“If you ask me what the next wave is, it’s fake news,” he said. “Malvertising has moved on […] it’s now clickbait and fake news. Disseminating this kind of news is the name of the game and it’s going to be the big next wave.” Considering how involved nation states appear to have been in that practice themselves in recent years, it’s hard to imagine he’s wrong.

As threatening as malware attacks from organized crime, government-sponsored vigilantes, and militarized hackers are, the most reassurance you can take in such a time of uncertainty is that the weakest link in the security chain is almost always the end user. That’s you..

It’s scary, but empowering, too. It means that although the people writing the malware, the attack vectors and the very reason for creating viruses and trojans in the first place may have changed, the best ways of staying safe online are the old ways. Keep strong passwords. Patch your software. And be careful what links you click.

As Malwarebytes Klecyzinski told us after our interview, “If you’re not paranoid, you’re not going to survive.”

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Intel Hades Canyon NUC8i7HVK

Research Center:

Intel Hades Canyon NUC8i7HVK

What if your gaming desktop didn’t have to be big and loud? What if it were smaller than a tissue box, and no louder than a laptop? And what if that exact same desktop could handle just about anything else you throw at it, from everyday web browsing to video editing?

Those are the questions posed by Intel’s latest Next Unit of Computing (NUC), better known by its ‘Hades Canyon’ codename. The way it answers is a big deal. NUC isn’t a mainstream brand for Intel, but the hardware inside Hades Canyon is important. The processor is Intel’s Core i7-8809G, which pairs an Intel Core processor with AMD’s Radeon RX Vega graphics.

It’s an unholy, and consequential, alliance. Hades Canyon promises performance equal to a mid-range gaming desktop in a thin box that measures just eight inches wide and less than two inches thick. Is this the dawn of a new era for power-efficient PC gaming, or does the NUC choke on its aspirations?

What the NUC?

The first Next Unit of Computing, or NUC, was built by Intel six years ago to re-imagine what a basic desktop might look like. Small and boxy, the line has continually pioneered cutting-edge performance in pint-sized machines. If you haven’t heard of it, however, don’t be surprised. The goal of NUC is not to compete with PC builders like Dell and HP. Instead it’s meant to inspire new, thinner, smaller designs, as well as entice business customers who may see value in rolling out hundreds of small, identical computers.

Oh, and it can handle up to six displays at once. That’s nuts.

The Hades Canyon NUC, like its predecessors, isn’t meant for the average joe. It doesn’t ship with RAM or a hard drive installed. A Windows license is MIA. You must buy and install all that yourself.

The absence of key hardware doesn’t mean a bargain price, either. There’s two versions of the Hades Canyon NUC. Our review unit, which is VR-Ready and includes an unlocked GPU, is $1,000. A less powerful version, which has Intel’s locked Core i7-8705G and a less powerful version of AMD’s Radeon RX Vega, is available for $800. The RAM, storage and operating system you must buy will add $300 to $500 to the price of either, depending on what you choose.

Little box, with lots of ports

Though small by most standards, Hades Canyon is the biggest NUC so far. Measuring almost nine inches wide, about five inches deep, and 1.75 inches tall, it’s quite a bit larger than even Skull Canyon, Intel’s first attempt at a gaming NUC. Compared to a full desktop, however, Hades Canyon is diminutive. The Alienware’s Alpha R2 is almost as small at 8 inches on a side and two inches thick, but it’s about 60 percent larger by volume. That’s a difference you’ll notice if you see them side-by-side.

The bulk Hades Canyon adds over Skull Canyon goes to the cooling solution, which is much larger than before and now uses a vapor chamber design comparable to that found in Razer’s Blade Pro laptop and the Xbox One X.

Despite its size, the Hades Canyon NUC wants to prove itself equal to a big tower desktop, and not just in performance. It also brings an impressive array of connectivity. That includes front and rear HDMI 2.0a ports, two Mini-DisplayPort, two Thunderbolt 3, two gigabit Ethernet, front-mounted USB-C 3.1 Gen2, and five total USB 3.0 Type-A. There’s an SDXC slot, stereo jacks, TOSLINK, and even a far-field microphone. But wait, it gets even better! There’s also a VESA mounting plate, so you can attach the device to the back of a VESA-compatible monitor or television.

Oh, and it can handle up to six displays at once. That’s nuts. Most tower PCs can’t do that.

The internals are equally impressive. The lid, once removed, provides easy access to two DDR4-2400+ slots that can handle up to 32GB of memory. There’s also two M.2 hard drive connectors with support for NVMe, SATA3, and Intel’s Optane memory. 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2 are present, as well.

All that’s unimportant, though, compared to Hades Canyon’s key feature. A glowing skull on the lid. It lights up whenever it’s powered on — the skull outlined in blue, while angry eyes shine red. It’s a simple, effective touch that makes the NUC more than another black box. Don’t worry – you can turn the skull off if it annoys you.

A laptop CPU does its best desktop impression

The Intel Core i7-8809G is a new chip, but the processor itself isn’t the real story. It’s a typical example of high-end mobile hardware from Intel with four cores, eight threads, and a maximum boost clock speed of 4.2GHz. The i7-8809G does benefit from a thermal design power well beyond what most laptops allow, which means it doesn’t have to throttle its performance as often as a laptop chip. That pays dividends in benchmarks.

Hades Canyon hit a single-core score of 4,588 in Geekbench 4, and a multi-core score of 16,176. Those numbers beat laptops with 8th-generation Core processors, as well as the Core i3-8100 quad-core in Dell’s XPS 8930 desktop. You’ll see better performance from a god-tier desktop like Origin’s Millennium, which scored 25,857 in the multi-core test, but Hades Canyon does not disappoint. Its performance is on-par with what we expect from desktop computers sold for around $1,000 (though remember the hard drive and RAM you must purchase will up the NUC’s cost).

Our video encoding test, which uses Handbrake to transcode a 4K trailer from h.264 to h.265, was also favorable for the NUC. It needed two minutes and 47 minutes to complete the task. Even top-tier laptops, like the Dell XPS 13 and Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga, need four to five minutes.

Intel shipped our review unit with an 120GB Optane drive alongside a 512GB solid state drive. That’s a lot of fast storage but, as mentioned, the NUC doesn’t ship with it included. You must buy storage separately. We imagine most owners will purchase more affordable storage, like WD’s Blue 500GB M.2 drive.

Raising the on-board graphics bar

While the NUC’s processor performance is excellent, the real story is what it’s paired with; AMD Radeon RX Vega graphics. The specific configuration included with the Core i7-8809G is called Radeon RX Vega M GH. It has 24 compute units, a base clock speed of 1,063MHz, and a maximum “dynamic” frequency of 1,190MHz, all pairs with four gigabytes of HBM2 memory. The GPU alone rivals the performance of a PlayStation 4 Pro.

The Vega GPU fully supports DirectX 12, Vulkan, and OpenGL 4.5, as well as 4K output at 60Hz. You can, in fact, power up to six displays off Hades Canyon – incredibly impressive for such a small rig.

All this is controlled by a reskin of AMD’s Radeon driver software. The color scheme has changed from red to blue and AMD logos have been substituted for Intel, but it’s the same look with most of the same features, including Wattman for overclocking, Chill for quieter use in less demanding scenarios, and FreeSync.

The use of AMD drivers is reassuring because driver support has been a major problem for Intel graphics in the past. We’re skeptical about future updates, however, because Intel hasn’t committed to a schedule. It’ll be a disappointment if the drivers are updated once every few months or even less.

What the future holds we can’t say, but we can tell you how Hades Canyon performs right now – and it’s impressive.

Hades Canyon enters the 3DMark test strong, scoring 8,469 in the Fire Strike test. That’s almost exactly what we saw from Dell’s Inspiron 15 7577 Gaming, which we tested with Nvidia’s GTX 1060 Max-Q  graphics. It’s just slightly behind the HP Omen 15 which, again, had the GTX 1060 Max-Q.

The Dell XPS 8930, a tower desktop with a standard GTX 1060 card, scored notably better at 9,767, but Hades Canyon is still in the same ballpark. And the NUC easily beats the Acer Nitro 5 Spin, which scored 5,209 when equipped with a GTX 1050 Ti.

We saw similar results in games. Rocket League and Civilization VI were handled with ease; even the latter averaged 47 frames per second at 1440p and Ultra detail settings. Battlefield 1 averaged better than 60 FPS at 1080p resolution and Ultra detail. The game managed an average of 49 FPS at 1440p resolution and Ultra detail.

You can play jaw-dropping titles at maximum detail, if you settle for 1080p resolution

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was, as usual, the real challenge. Still, the game averaged 33 frames per second at 1080p resolution and Ultra detail. It also averaged 31.7 FPS at 1440p and High detail. The game is entirely enjoyable – if you give up on the dream of 60 FPS gameplay or anything close to it.

Benchmarks aside, we wanted to see what it was like in the real world – so we used it for a long weekend of gaming. Hades Canyon proved a capable gaming companion. This isn’t just because its powerful, though the benchmarks do show it’s a quick machine. The NUC also benefits from today’s more forgiving mainstream games.

Want to play The Witcher 3 or Final Fantasy XV with everything turned up? This isn’t the machine for you. That’s not what we usually do, though – we more often find ourselves playing Overwatch, Fortnite, or Rocket League. Games like those run without trouble on Hades Canyon.

You can play jaw-dropping titles at high or even maximum detail, however, if you settle for 1080p resolution and 30 to 45 frames per second. For that reason – and because you can’t upgrade the GPU in the future — we think Hades Canyon is best when paired with a high-refresh 1080p monitor.

Virtual reality

Gaming is enough ambition for a PC as small as Hades Canyon, but Intel hasn’t stopped there. The company also says it can handle virtual reality. In fact, that seems half the reason for its incredible buffet of connectivity. VR headsets demand plenty of USB and video connections.

Enjoying VR on a system this small may seem crazy, but there’s logic to it. It’s quite difficult and annoying to hook up a headset to a large desktop. That goes double if the headset is ever moved between computers – as is common, because having a VR headset connected 24-7 can be annoying. Better still, a small PC opens the possibility of pairing it with a battery pack and enjoying tether-free VR.

The NUC’s power is cutting the minimum requirements for VR close, however. VRMark’s easiest test, Orange, reached a score of 2,583. The benchmark’s notes said that score was insufficient to promise a smooth VR experience, since framerates often dipped below 60 frames per second, nevermind the 90 FPS that’s preferable.

Our limited experience showed success will depend entirely on what you try to do. Star Trek: Bridge Crew was no problem on the Vive, but you’re not going to be able to use the Vive Pro smoothly. In the end, the VR verdict is a lot like the system’s gaming performance – it’s more than enough for many titles, but it’s not going to handle cutting-edge VR experiences with all the settings turned up.

Intel Hades Canyon NUC8i7HVK Compared To

Alienware Alpha R2

Origin Chronos (2016)

iBuyPower Revolt 2 Pro

Maingear X-Cube Z170

Origin Chronos (2015)

Digital Storm Eclipse

Falcon Northwest Tiki-Z

Syber Vapor I

iBuyPower SBX

Maingear Torq

Falcon Northwest Fragbox 2013

Alienware X51

Falcon Northwest FragBox

HP Firebird 802

Maingear Dash

Our Take

Intel’s Hades Canyon NUC is early, definitive proof that the company’s partnership with AMD will be fruitful. We’re amazed to see a system so small handle all the titles in our test suite at 1080p and maximum detail. Pricing, and the NUC’s niche audience, are its only obstacles. $1,000 is a lot to ask for a PC lacking a hard drive, RAM, or operating system, no matter how impressive its other hardware.

Is there a better alternative?

The Alienware Alpha R2 was the gold standard in this segment, but a lack of updated hardware means it still offers only a sixth-generation Intel Core processor and Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 graphics.

Other options include the MSI Trident 3 and Zotac’s Magnus line – but again, these systems are a generation or two behind the Hades Canyon NUC. The competitors are less expensive, but none offer as much performance per cubic inch.

How long will it last?

Intel ships Hades Canyon with a three-year warranty. That’s unusual for a desktop. We think it’ll struggle to remain relevant to gaming for longer than its warranty, as more demanding games will certainly push beyond the system’s limits.

Should you buy it?

Yes, if you’re a hardware geek.

Hades Canyon fills a wonderful niche. If you’re willing to slap in a hard drive and RAM yourself, this NUC will prove an outstanding compact gaming PC. If that’s not you, don’t worry. We’re sure the Core i7-8809G will appear in rigs built by major brands later this year.

You probably won’t buy an Intel NUC, but it could change the way you game

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Intel’s NUCs are something of a niche product. If you’re unfamiliar, they’re really just very small PCs. They typically have the kind of horsepower you’d expect out of an entry-level or mid-range laptop, just enough to get you through the a workday, or maybe serve as a media center tucked safely away behind your TV. In other words, they’re usually pretty unremarkable. Usually. Intel’s Hades Canyon NUC, the latest of its kind, is a different story entirely.

I’ll be honest, I never paid much attention to the NUCs. They were products from a weird subcategory of a subcategory, and they just never got my interest. There are stick PCs that do the same thing, and products like the Apple TV, Chromecast, Roku, and Fire TV fill the media center niche pretty well. NUCs didn’t seem very noteworthy. Even when the Hades Canyon NUC came into the office, I was unimpressed. Intel’s marketing for the device promised improved gaming performance and quicker hardware, but I was skeptical. Until I spent some time with it.

This NUC is different from its predecessors in that it’s the first NUC to feature Intel’s upcoming 8th-generation processors with on board Radeon Vega graphics. That’s the marquee feature right there. It’s a CPU with on board graphics that can keep up with entry-level and mid-range PC hardware.

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

During our tests, the NUC hit an average of 49 FPS in Battlefield 1 on Ultra settings at 1440p. That’s kind of unbelievable. This tiny little thing without a stand-alone graphics card outperformed some full-sized desktop graphics cards. That means this Intel chip with Radeon graphics can provide performance on par with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, and comes really close to the performance we’ve seen out of our GTX 1060.

What does that mean for PC gaming? Well, we don’t really know for sure — and that’s the exciting part. If this processor in this miniature system can perform as well as it does without a discrete graphics card, that means gaming PCs can get a whole lot smaller.

It could lead to a lot of interesting innovations into a gaming PC market that really needs some. For instance,  your gaming rig could become something you can toss in a messenger bag and take to work, or a friend’s house, or on a business trip. One thing’s for sure though, the implications of the Hades Canyon NUC are going to turn a lot of heads — and might even ruffle a few feathers.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Intel Hades Canyon NUC8i7HVK
• Intel ‘Hades Canyon’ NUC hands-on review
• Intel’s Radeon-backed ‘Hades Canyon’ mini PC runs games at 1080p, Ultra graphics
• Intel’s ‘Hades Canyon’ NUC packs gaming hardware into just 1.2 liters
• The best gaming desktops you can buy

Microsoft creates a particle promising a more accurate quantum computer

Microsoft

Quantum computing is one of those technologies that is difficult to understand but that nevertheless promises to dramatically impact how computing impacts our lives. Many contemporary technologies, such as artificial intelligence, need faster computers than traditional computing architectures allow, and quantum computing is likely what will enable those technologies to advance.

Most major technology companies are working to build their own quantum computers, and Microsoft is among those that are working the hardest. It’s recently taken a significant step toward its own version of a commercial quantum computer, Bloomberg reports, and that step is based on some pretty basic physics and involves a subatomic particle that has been difficult to create.

The particle in question is the Majorana fermion, a specific kind of fermion particle that acts as its own antiparticle. You will appreciate this fact most if you’re a physicist, but for everyone else, it’s enough to know that the particle will serve as the “building block” of Microsoft’s quantum computing technology.

Essentially, Majorana fermions can be used to create quantum bits, or qubits, that are the basic elements used by quantum computers to perform calculations. The particles bring the specific benefits of potentially being less error-prone, making them more suitable for practice quantum computing applications. Now that Microsoft’s Delft University of Technology, located in Holland, has evidence of the creation of these particles, the company can move forward with creating usable qubits.

Google, IBM, D-Wave Systems, and other competitors are in many ways ahead of Microsoft in the creation of a viable quantum computer. Primarily, Microsoft lags in that it hasn’t yet created a qubit that actually works in a quantum computer design. If this current research pans out, then perhaps Microsoft could make up some lost ground, by creating a design that’s less “noisy” than the competition and thus more efficient and accurate.

If you’re wondering why this matters, just imagine the difference between a thinking computer like Skynet and today’s far more limited Siri and Alexa digital assistants. Today’s binary computing architectures are less likely to get us to a truly intelligent machine, and it will likely take a major leap such as quantum computing to get us there. Microsoft’s recent accomplishment is just one more step in that direction.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Intel explores ‘spin qubits’ as the next wave in quantum computing
• Microsoft’s quantum computing language is now available for MacOS
• Intel is building brain-like processors that will power the robots of the future
• Google wants to push quantum computing mainstream with ‘Bristlecone’ chip
• Physicists create a new type of light, and it’s heavier than before

First Spectre, now BranchScope — another vulnerability in Intel processors

Researchers from four universities discovered a new vulnerability in Intel’s processors dubbed as BranchScope. The problem resides in the method a processor uses to predict where its current computational task will end, aka speculative execution. By exploiting this flaw, hackers with access to the PC could pull data stored from memory that’s otherwise inaccessible to all applications and users. 

The speculative execution process enhances the CPU’s speed by enabling the chip to “speculate” what needs to be done later in the chain of commands to finish the overall task as quickly as possible. This feature explores options in advance, taking different avenues in various branches to get to the final destination in the shortest amount of time. With the path laid out, the CPU completes its task and moves on to the next. 

The BranchScope exploit enables attackers to take control of this “think ahead” decision-making component and steer the upcoming path in the wrong direction. Hackers can then grab sensitive data stored in memory not generally accessible by users and applications. The vulnerability is similar to Spectre Variant 2, only BranchScope targets the process that decides which branch the CPU will take next whereas Spectre Variant 2 resides in the cache component associated with branch prediction. 

“BranchScope works reliably and efficiently from user space across three generations of Intel processors in the presence of system noise, with an error rate of less than one percent,” the paper states. “BranchScope can be naturally extended to attack SGX (Software Guard Extensions) enclaves with even lower error rates than in traditional systems.” 

The researchers specifically tested BranchScope on three Intel processors: The sixth-generation Core i6-6200U chip, the fourth-generation Core i7-4800MQ chip, and the second-generation Core i7-2600 chip. As the paper suggests, hackers don’t need administrator privileges to execute the attack. Data can even be pulled from private regions of memory, aka enclaves, that’s locked away by the processor’s Software Guard Extensions. 

The researchers believe Intel’s updates addressing Meltdown and the two Spectre vulnerabilities won’t mitigate the security hole seen in the BranchScope discovery. The problem resides in a different part of speculative execution thus Intel will need to conjure up new software fixes for current chips, and a hardware fix for future processors. But Intel believes it’s current patches should address the BranchScope issue. 

“We have been working with these researchers and have determined the method they describe is similar to previously known side channel exploits,” the company states. “We anticipate that existing software mitigations for previously known side channel exploits, such as the use of side channel resistant cryptography, will be similarly effective against the method described in this paper.” 

According to Intel, one of the best ways to protect customers is to have a close relationship with the research community. But the company likely wasn’t quite so enthusiastic after researchers went public with the Meldown and Spectre vulnerabilities earlier this year. The company is likely bracing for additional criticism given BranchScope is now out in the open. 

Editors’ Recommendations

• New ‘Prime’ Meltdown, Spectre exploits outlined by Nvidia, Princeton University
• Intel opens bug hunt to all security researchers, offers possible $250K payout
• Microsoft misses another Edge-related 90-day security disclosure deadline
• Microsoft will pay you up to $250,000 to find Spectre-like flaws
• Intel CEO reveals hardware plans for addressing Meltdown, Spectre exploits

Best Cases for the Honor View 10

Protect your Honor View 10 with one of these cases.

The Honor View 10 is a slick new phone with a modern design and plenty of power to back it up, but it’s also made entirely of aluminum, which is notoriously slippery and easy to scratch. If you’re thinking about picking up a View 10, a case wouldn’t be a bad idea.

There aren’t too many cases for the View 10 at the moment, but we’ve sought out some of the best cases you should consider.

• Avidet Hard Back
• Tudia Slim Fit
• KuGi Folio
• CoverON ClearGuard
• TopAce Ultra Thin
• Armor-X

Avidet Hard Back

The Avidet Hard Case is a simple case for those that just want a little protection for the back of their phone. Rather than wrapping around all of its edges, this case simply snaps onto the sides of the View 10 and adds some much-needed grip.

It’s made of a hard polycarbonate to withstand any scratches or dents that would otherwise deface the View 10’s aluminum back, and it leaves plenty of room on the bottom and sides for easy access to buttons and ports.

If you want to pick up an Avidet case for yourself, it’ll only run you about $8 on Amazon.

See at Amazon

Tudia Slim Fit

If you’re a bit more prone to dropping your phone, you may be better off with the Tudia Slim Fit. This case combines a soft inner lining with a hard outer shell for dual layer protection, absorbing the shock from most drops.

The raised edges around the camera and screen provide additional protection, and there are covers over the power and volume buttons to make them easier to find. Best of all, this case is only $9.

See at Amazon

KuGi Folio

Perhaps a folio case is more your style. KuGi offers a folio case made of TPU and polyurethane that allows you to prop up the View 10 for a more convenient video watching experience.

KuGi includes magnets to help keep the case shut when not in use, and there are various cutouts giving easy access to the buttons and ports.

This is one of the cheapest case on the list, at just $6 (though shipping costs just as much).

See at Amazon

CoverON ClearGuard

The ClearGuard by CoverON is a classic-looking case that combines a tough TPU bumper with a clear polycarbonate panel protecting the back of the phone. This case is particularly nice if you want to show off the color of your View 10 — especially if you have the sleek dark blue finish.

As always, there are cutouts for the various ports and microphones on the View 10, as well as covers for the power and volume buttons. If you want the CoverON ClearGuard for yourself, it’ll run you about $9.

See at Amazon

TopAce Ultra Thin

For the no-nonsense shopper, the TopAce Ultra Thin is the most traditional case — a simple TPU cover that wraps all the way around the sides of the View 10 and creates a protective lip for the front. It’s flexible, making it easy to apply and remove, and the combination of brushed metal and carbon fiber stylings make for an attractive look.

Like other cases in this list, the TopAce cover adds extra protection to the corners, and goes a step further with a shock-resistant inner lining.

You can snag the TopAce Ultra Thin on Amazon for just $8.

See at Amazon

Armor-X

This is easily the most niche case of the list. Like plenty of other cases, the Armor-X case protects the View 10 from drops with shock-resistant TPU, but you’ll notice something a little different about it. On the back of the case is a large mount Armor-X calls its X-Mount adapter, which allows you to attach the View 10 to bicycles, belt clips, and even carabiners.

The X-Mount adapter also doubles as a kickstand, allowing you to prop up the View 10 and take advantage of its large display for watching videos.

The Armor-X case definitely isn’t for everyone, but if it piques your interest, you can order one for around $25.

See at Armor-X

Which one would you buy?

There may not be as many cases available for the View 10 as there are for more popular phones, but hopefully the ones we presented have given you some ideas. Are you ordering any of them for your View 10? Let us know in the comments below!

Updated March 2018: Removed ZeKing case and added cases from Tudia and CoverON.

Sony Xperia XZ2 and XZ2 Compact now up for pre-order in the U.S.

Available for $799 and $649, respectively.

Sony’s Xperia phones don’t get much love here in the States, and depending on who you ask, that’s either a shame or well-deserved. As such, you’ll either feel indifferent or ecstatic to learn that the Xperia XZ2 and XZ2 Compact are now both available for pre-order in the U.S.

These are the two Android phones that Sony showed off at MWC in February, and they’re some of the most exciting entries we’ve seen with the Xperia line in years.

If you’re interested in reserving either of the phones for yourself, B&H appears to be the only retailer that’s taking pre-orders for the phones right now.

The Xperia XZ2 will set you back $799.99, whereas the smaller XZ2 Compact is going for $649.99. All color options are available, including Green, Black, Silver, and Pink. Shipping is free, but in regards to a release date, B&H simply states that the devices are “coming soon.” Europe’s official launch is scheduled for April 5, and assuming the U.S. follows shortly after, you shouldn’t have to wait too terribly long before your new phone ships.

See at B&H

Today’s best deals you won’t want to miss

Whether you’re looking for new tech gear or household items, we’ve got you covered.

Today you can get great deals on a variety of devices including a computer monitor mount, Anker Bluetooth headphones, Google Play gift cards, and more! Don’t pass these up.

View the rest of the deals

If you want to know about the deals as soon as they are happening, you’ll want to follow Thrifter on Twitter, and sign up for the newsletter, because missing out on a great deal stinks!

Best social multiplayer games to play at a party

Your smartphone is the key to an evening of sweet party games with friends!

Party games provide a great way for friends, new and old, to come together, share a laugh, and just have a good time. But with pretty much everyone owning a smartphone these days, the way we play party games has evolved.

While some might say it’s anti-social to be on your phone at party, these hilarious party games typically only require an Android phone

We’ve included a couple options that use a Chromecast-enabled TV, along with a tried and tested VR classic that requires Daydream View or Samsung Gear VR.

• Escape Team
• Selfie Games: Sketchies
• Chwazi Finger Chooser
• Jackbox Party Packs
• Psych!
• Who Can’t Draw?
• Teledoodle
• Charades
• Ticket To Ride
• Cardcast
• Big Web Quiz
• Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes!

Escape Team

Escape rooms are great fun for a group of friends, but getting a group together can be tricky and booking a room can get expensive.

Escape Team lets you enjoy the fun of solving escape room-style puzzles in the comfort of your own home using pen and paper. You download and print off missions from the Escape Team website and then load up the matching mission in the Android app. The app gives you your countdown clock and delivers a fictional backstory for the missions via audio clips. You can also use the app to request hints if your group gets stuck on a puzzle.

The game is recommended for groups of 2 to 4 people, and requires some outside-the-box thinking and teamwork if you’re to be successful. You get the introduction and first mission for free then you can get the remaining four missions for just $1 — and that’s the only in-app purchase or ad you’ll see. The paid missions are each around a half hour to complete, so for $4, you can get a full afternoon’s worth of good clean fun saving the world.

If you’ve ever tried an escape room or just love solving puzzles, you’re going to fall in love with this game.

Download: Escape Team (Free w/IAPs)

Selfie Games: Sketchies

Selfie Games is a quirky and fun casual party game that makes use of the Google Chromecast to open up the gaming fun for the whole party.

Designed to be played with 3-10 players, everyone loads up the app on their phone (iOS folks can play, too) and snap a few selfies. These selfies are then used as drawing prompts and there’s around where everyone sketches out a few scenes. Once everyone is done their beautiful works of art, everyone writes a fake caption for each selfie sketch — you’re trying to trick the other players to choose yours.

Everything is then revealed on the TV and players choose which caption they think is real. You get points if someone chooses your caption, you choose the original caption, or nobody chooses the real caption on your drawing.

The app is free to download on iOS or Android, although one person needs to pay to unlock the full game for the party — that cost is currently just $4.99. It’s some silly good fun and plays like a dream on Chromecast — although you can also play it on a computer or tablet by going to the Selfie Games website.

Download: Selfie Games (Free w/IAP to unlock hosting privilege)

Chwazi Finger CHOOSER

Most of the entries on this list are great multiplayer games you and your friends can play using your phone at a party, but Chwazi Finger Chooser is an awesome app to have on your phone for more traditional games. It’s an app that’s designed to quickly and randomly help groups decide who goes first or split into teams.

Simply load up the app, choose the parameters (fingers to chose who goes first, and groups to make teams), and then have each player place one finger on the screen. Once everyone is in, Chwazi takes a moment and then randomly selects one finger to go first or splits everyone into color-coded teams.

It’s a quick and fair way to split up into teams or choose who goes first so you and your friends can spend more time playing and less time bickering about making fair teams. Chwazi can support up to 32 fingers, but good luck fitting that many on your average smartphone (tablets will work better for larger groups).

Download: Chwazi (Free)

Jackbox Party Pack

Since 2013, Jackbox Games has been developing outstanding social party games that are super intuitive to play, and available across a wide variety of platforms. It gets people talking and laughing like any good party game should, and Jackbox has really fine-tuned the party game genre. They’ve repackaged a number of their mobile games into fun party games you can play on your TV or computer and have released three party packs each featuring five great party games. Best of all there are no special controllers required — up to 8 people can play using only a smartphone, tablet, or laptop to connect.

The three bundles each contain five different social games that typically support 3 to 8 players:

• Jackbox Party Pack — includes YOU DON’T KNOW JACK 2015, Fibbage XL, Drawful, Word Spud, and Lie Swatter.
• Jackbox Party Pack 2 — includes Fibbage 2, Earwax, Bidiots, Quiplash, and Bomb Corp.
• Jackbox Party Pack 3 — Includes Quiplash 2, Trivia Murder Party, Guesspionage, Tee K.O., and Fakin’ It.

Jackbox offers its Party Packs for virtually every platform and video game console, including Android TV, Amazon Fire TV and Steam. People at your party can log in and play on their phone, a tablet or a computer — all they really need is a browser to access Jackbox.tv and the four-letter room code.

All party packs are available for $24.99 no matter which system or device you’re running with the exception of PlayStation 4 users who can try the original Jackbox Party Pack for free, and enjoy a 70% discount on Jackbox Party Pack 3 with PlayStation Plus.

My friends and I are quite partial to the bundle of games included in the first Party Box, so I’ll link it in the Google Play Store below. But you really can’t go wrong with any of these bundles. Each offers great value and a guaranteed good time with friends and family. Best of all, “The Jackbox Party Pack 4” was just recently given an autumn release date, so we have even more uproarious party games to look forward to in the near future!

Download: Jackbox Party Pack ($24.99)

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Psych!

Psych is a game of trivia and bluffing where everyone comes up with a fake answer to the question, and then try and guess which is the real answer. You get points for picking the right answer, or if someone picks your answer. It’s very similar to games like Balderdash or Fibbish.

This game requires that all players have the app loaded onto their own phones, along with a solid internet or Wi-Fi connection. There are in-app purchases to unlock new categories, or decks, but there’s enough variety in what’s included for free for an evening’s worth of fun.

Download: Psych (Free)

Who Can’t Draw?

Get your friends and family to flex their artistic skills (or lack of said skills) and find out Who Can’t Draw. The first artist gets a word and does their best to draw a picture of that word. The phone is then passed around the room, with each person trying to do their best to copy the drawing they were passed… in just 15 seconds. It’s essentially a sketching version of the old schoolyard game of telephone. Once the phone reaches the last person in the game, they must try and guess what the original word.

At the end of each round, you’re shown a results page with everyone’s drawing. It’s hilarious to see how the interpretation changes from person to person, as guessed word and the original word are rarely the same.

Download: Who Can’t Draw? (Free)

Teledoodle

Another social drawing game, Teledoodle is a mobile version of Telestrations that can be played on a single device with up to 8 people. Drawers get up to a minute to create their masterpieces, but it’s ultimately up to the guesser to determine what was drawn. That guess is then passed to another drawer who must interpret what they are given so on and so on until everyone has had a turn. Then, it’s time to see how the drawings and guesses progressed, often with outrageous results.

Download: Teledoodle (Free)

Charades

Love it or hate it, charades is a classic party game that’s perfect for all ages. The Charades app takes the format and brings it into the 21st century by holding your phone up to your forehead and having your friends and family act out or try to give you clues for the word on the screen. With over 44 categories available in this free-to-play app, there’s a ton of fun to be had.

You might have played this game as Heads Up, which is typically what we would recommend here, but according to reports from the Google Play Store, a recent update has caused the app to become unstable for many users. If you find it working fine for you, it’s another great option.

Download: Charades (Free)

Ticket To Ride

The award-winning train-based board game is a household favorite around these parts, and it’s also got an outstanding, fully-licensed app for Android. It’s a great little game to play with up to four other friends, featuring pass-and-play for playing on a single device, or local area network options if everyone has the app on their own phone. Setup and play time is short and brisk thanks to all the card dealing and pieces being handled digitally, making a well-designed game even more fun to play.

This is a paid app, with in-app purchases to unlock other game boards. Given the price of the physical version of the game, the combo that includes all expansions and versions is a great deal that increases the game’s replayability tenfold.

Download: Ticket To Ride ($2.99)

Cardcast

If you’ve got a Chromecast, you’ve also got a digital version of Cards Against Humanity to play as a two-screened experience with your TV and phones. It’s an open-sourced game that actually allows you to go in and create your own decks to play with if you so desire, or choose a deck from the deep database of user-created decks. Up to 10 people can play at one time, and players are free to connect or disconnect in the middle of a game.

If you’re not familiar with CAH, it’s notorious for its not-safe-for-work content. However, one of the benefits of Cardcast is that you can find a family-friendly deck to play, so that Granny isn’t offended… unless of course you’ve got a pretty cool Granny.

Download: Cardcast (Free)

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Big Web Quiz

Another quick and fun game to play on the Chromecast, Big Web Quiz is a fast and fun quiz game with cross-platform compatibility — whether your friends and family are on iOS or Android, everyone is able to download the app and connect to the Chromecast.

Up to six people can connect up and play. Everyone watches the screen for the question, then uses their phone to answer. It’s a fun, colorful app filled with interesting and quirky trivia.

Download: Big Web Quiz (free)

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes!

It’s not too often we get to recommend a VR game for a party or social gathering given how isolating a typical VR experience is… but Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is far from your typical VR game. It’s an intense game of bomb defusal that looks to recreate those movie moments where the main character gets defusal instructions over the walkie-talkie.

Available for both the Samsung Gear VR and Google’s Daydream View, one person straps the VR headset on and gets to look and manipulate the bomb, while everyone else in the room consults the bomb manual (downloadable for free from BombManual.com. Can your family or friends work together to defuse the bomb before it goes off? This game is quite stressful at times, but also a lot of fun.

If you’re playing on a Samsung Gear VR, you’ll need to download from the Oculus Store. If you’re playing on a Daydream View with your Pixel phone, you’ll want to download the version from the Google Play Store.

Download Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes from Google Play ($9.99)

Download Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes from Oculus Store ($9.99)

Anything we missed?

Got a party classic that didn’t make our list? Let us know in the comments below!

Updated March 2018: We’ve added Selfie Games to our list! Create some hilarious memories at your next family gathering!

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