Hackers are now favoring ransomware over personal data theft

IBM’s latest X-Force Threat Intelligence Index report reveals that more than 2.9 billion records were leaked through publicly disclosed incidents in 2017. While that sounds horribly bad, there’s a bright side to this stormy disclosure: the number is 25 percent lower than the amount of records leaked in 2016. Why? Because hackers are shifting over to ransomware. They’re becoming more focused on holding files hostage for money than on unleashing all that data to the dark markets. 

According to IBM, this shift to ransomware cost corporations more than $8 billion globally during 2017, a number derived from downtime, ransom payments, and other impacts on day-to-day business. The global logistics and transportation industries alone lost “millions of dollars” in revenue during 2017 due to ransomware attacks. 

Ransomware is a type of malware that infiltrates a network and encrypts files on connected PCs. These files become unrecoverable, and require a “key” generated by the hacker to be released from captivity. These keys are provided after a payment using cryptocurrency, adding to the overall cost corporations incur due to downtime. Hiring a third party to recover the files may or may not work, depending on the level of encryption. 

“With the potentially irreversible encryption lock of crypto-ransomware, victims without up-to-date backups often choose to pay the ransom their attackers demand,” the report states. “Losing one’s files on personal devices may cost a few hundred dollars, but that effect extends much further for organizations where infected users could cause the company to lose massive amounts of data, and possibly to have to pay the criminals considerable sums of money to get it back.” 

The report reveals that many organizations keep cryptocurrency on hand so they can resolve the problem quickly and reduce costly downtime. Law enforcement agencies discourage payments to hackers, but the rising ransomware “epidemic” is getting to the point where it may potentially cost corporations across the globe more than $11.5 billion annually by 2019. Malware, by contrast, values leaked personal data over the potential financial gain of locking sensitive data on corporate networks. 

In addition to ransomware, the report covers network attack trends, inadvertent insider incidents, insider-inflicted breaches, cybercrime, and cryptocurrency. One of the more alarming entries is the section about misconfigured cloud servers, which resulted in the exposure of more than two billion records in 2017, a whopping 424-percent increase over 2016. The problem actually dates back to 2015, as researchers found they could access the data on these cloud servers without the need for a username or password. 

In 2017 alone, 19 incidents regarding misconfigured cloud storage breached 345,850,453 records, equaling 2.2TB worth of data. Meanwhile, misconfigured cloud databases enabled 11 incidents exposing 566,402,270 records equaling 1.2TB worth of data. Misconfigured rsync, NAS, and backup solutions caused five incidents exposing 393,434,309 records equaling to 1TB of data. 

Financial services saw the largest issues in 2017 for the second year in a row. They experienced the highest volume of security incidents while falling in third place regarding actual cyberattacks. Information and communications technology industries experienced the highest number of attacks and the second-largest in security incidents. Manufacturing fell to third place in both attacks and incidents, followed by professional services. 

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Hackers are now favoring ransomware over personal data theft

IBM’s latest X-Force Threat Intelligence Index report reveals that more than 2.9 billion records were leaked through publicly disclosed incidents in 2017. While that sounds horribly bad, there’s a bright side to this stormy disclosure: the number is 25 percent lower than the amount of records leaked in 2016. Why? Because hackers are shifting over to ransomware. They’re becoming more focused on holding files hostage for money than on unleashing all that data to the dark markets. 

According to IBM, this shift to ransomware cost corporations more than $8 billion globally during 2017, a number derived from downtime, ransom payments, and other impacts on day-to-day business. The global logistics and transportation industries alone lost “millions of dollars” in revenue during 2017 due to ransomware attacks. 

Ransomware is a type of malware that infiltrates a network and encrypts files on connected PCs. These files become unrecoverable, and require a “key” generated by the hacker to be released from captivity. These keys are provided after a payment using cryptocurrency, adding to the overall cost corporations incur due to downtime. Hiring a third party to recover the files may or may not work, depending on the level of encryption. 

“With the potentially irreversible encryption lock of crypto-ransomware, victims without up-to-date backups often choose to pay the ransom their attackers demand,” the report states. “Losing one’s files on personal devices may cost a few hundred dollars, but that effect extends much further for organizations where infected users could cause the company to lose massive amounts of data, and possibly to have to pay the criminals considerable sums of money to get it back.” 

The report reveals that many organizations keep cryptocurrency on hand so they can resolve the problem quickly and reduce costly downtime. Law enforcement agencies discourage payments to hackers, but the rising ransomware “epidemic” is getting to the point where it may potentially cost corporations across the globe more than $11.5 billion annually by 2019. Malware, by contrast, values leaked personal data over the potential financial gain of locking sensitive data on corporate networks. 

In addition to ransomware, the report covers network attack trends, inadvertent insider incidents, insider-inflicted breaches, cybercrime, and cryptocurrency. One of the more alarming entries is the section about misconfigured cloud servers, which resulted in the exposure of more than two billion records in 2017, a whopping 424-percent increase over 2016. The problem actually dates back to 2015, as researchers found they could access the data on these cloud servers without the need for a username or password. 

In 2017 alone, 19 incidents regarding misconfigured cloud storage breached 345,850,453 records, equaling 2.2TB worth of data. Meanwhile, misconfigured cloud databases enabled 11 incidents exposing 566,402,270 records equaling 1.2TB worth of data. Misconfigured rsync, NAS, and backup solutions caused five incidents exposing 393,434,309 records equaling to 1TB of data. 

Financial services saw the largest issues in 2017 for the second year in a row. They experienced the highest volume of security incidents while falling in third place regarding actual cyberattacks. Information and communications technology industries experienced the highest number of attacks and the second-largest in security incidents. Manufacturing fell to third place in both attacks and incidents, followed by professional services. 

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Rumored 4K Chromebook could make the Pixelbook look like old news

One of the best parts of the Google Pixelbook was its beautiful display. But with a 3:2 aspect ratio, its pixel-dense 2,400 x 1,600 panel made for black-bar-trimmed media viewing. It may be that a new king of the Chromebooks is in the works though, as a hint within the Chromium source code suggests a Chromebook with a 4K display may not be far away.

Chromebooks are typically low-cost laptops targeted at those who do most of their computing tasks within a web browser. If your main purpose is to check email and watch Netflix, Chromebooks work very well and can save you a lot of money in return. Still, as the Pixelbook proved, there’s no harm in having the odd high-end Chromebook option for those who want it and a 4K version could join in at the top end.

We don’t have anything in the way of specifications for such a system, but we do know that much in the way Chrome OS’ source code supports the Pixelbook and its 2,400 x 1,600 display, under the codename “eve” it also now supports “atlas.” Atlas is an unknown device with a display resolution of 3,840 x 2,160, more commonly known as 4K.

Although it would seem likely that atlas is a new device altogether, the fact that it doesn’t seem to have an SD card slot could mean that it represents a 4K option for the Pixelbook.

The benefits of a 4K screen on a Chromebook aren’t exactly exhaustive, but as The Verge highlights, it could be that whoever is developing this is simply looking to make a 15-inch device with comparable features to Windows counterparts. Full-screen ultra-HD Netflix support could also be a selling point, as in theory, a 4K Chromebook should be cheaper than Windows alternatives, even if its hardware would need to be somewhat impressive to support the high resolution.

The question now arises of when we’ll learn more about such a device. It may be that Google will talk up “atlas” at its upcoming I/O in May, but if it’s being produced by another manufacturer, we may have a longer wait.

For a look at some of our favorite Chromebooks, here’s a list of the best ones available right now.

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HTC pool selfie advert banned because the U11 can’t dive like Tom Daley

HTC | YouTube

A commercial for the HTC U11 has been banned because it’s not feasible for the phone to safely replicate the activity being portrayed.

The advert, originally published in mid-2017, shows British Olympic diving medalist Tom Daley using the HTC U11 to take selfies of himself mid-dive, using the phone’s squeezable edges. The advert shows Daley taking selfies of multiple dives, and implies that the athlete consistently dunks the phone in the diving pool. While the HTC U11 is water-resistant, that resistance is for fresh water, and HTC admit that the varied temperatures and chemical compositions of chlorinated pool water made it impossible to guarantee the U11 would not be harmed in real-life use.

Furthermore, the phone is only IP67 rated and water-resistant of depths up to 1 meter, making this stunt even harder to pull off for a layman. HTC attempt to address this at the end of the advert, pointing out that Daley is a professional and his stunts shouldn’t be replicated, and that he held the phone above his head to avoid immersion of the phone below a meter. The British Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) did not consider this to be clear enough, and upheld the complaint, ordering the advert be removed from the company’s social media accounts.

In a direct statement, the ASA said: “While we acknowledged that a professional Olympic athlete such as Tom Daley would be able to dive from a 10-metre high diving board and keep within the one-metre distance required, we considered it unlikely that a consumer attempting something similar would be able to avoid being submerged to a depth which did not exceed, even briefly, that measurement. […] Because consumers were likely to understand that the product could deliberately be submerged in a swimming pool and that no precautions were required to be taken after it had been immersed to preserve the product’s performance, and because that was not the case, we concluded that the ad exaggerated the capability of the product and was misleading.”

While the advert has currently been removed from the original YouTube account, it’s still possible to view the video on other YouTube channels not directly affiliated with HTC.

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Get your zSilver ready: Razer now has it’s own online game store

Razer is now jumping into the digital distribution market with the launch of the Razer Game Store. The move shouldn’t be surprising given the company has its toes dipped into mostly everything gaming-related, spanning laptops, peripherals, controllers, and even a smartphone. Selling digital PC games makes perfect sense, and with Razer’s stamp of approval on each sale, you can be rest assured the keys you enter into Steam and Uplay aren’t fake or invalid as seen with other “discount” digital distribution platforms. 

The company set out to create an online store that rewards customers for every purchase. Benefits include earning zSilver, aka the company’s virtual loyalty credits, that counts toward the purchase of Razer peripherals, discounts, gift vouchers, and so on. For instance, you can get the Razer Atheris mouse for 91,500 zSilver, or the Razer Hammerhead Pro V2 headset for 128,500 zSilver. 

For starters, purchasing the vanilla version of Far Cry 5 currently costs $54, which will grant you 2,159 zSilver credits using a credit card or PayPal. Purchase the game with 5,399 zGold coins and your zSilver intake jumps up to 5,399 tokens. 

Razer’s zGold is a digital currency launched last year along with the zVault virtual wallet. You can use zGold to purchase goods on Razer’s storefront or other third-party services like GamersGate, Indiegala, and within supporting games. Overall, zGold are digital coins that, when used instead of cash, earn reward tokens (zSilver) that can be saved and redeemed for products or applied against purchases for a discount. 

According to Razer, your virtual zVault wallet can only hold 50,000 zGold coins, and only 200,000 zSilver tokens. You can purchase zGold coins in increments of $10 up to $100 worth of digital currency, or purchase coins in the following bundles: 

zGold 

Cash price 

1,000 

$10 

3,000 

$30 

5,000 

$50 

10,000 

$100 

 That said, if you want to use zGold to purchase a $54 game, you need to purchase $60 worth of coins using the Custom Amount option in your zVault account. 

Meanwhile, every week Razer will pick four new games and slash their prices. As a launch bonus, pick any one of the four “Razer Exclusives” and get a $15 discount voucher for the Razer store, twice the zSilver earned per purchase, and a $10 Razerstore hardware voucher. This week’s specials include Far Cry 5 ($54), Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom ($54), Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus ($24), and Assassin’s Creed Origins ($34). 

Here is a batch of other PC games currently discounted on the Razer Game Store: 

Game 

Price 

Mortal Kombat X 

$7 

Mortal Kombat XL 

$6 

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 

$27 

Injustice 2 

$32 

Grand Theft Auto V 

$55 

Max Max 

$6 

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege 

$28 

Middle-Earth: Shadow of War 

$39 

Batman: Arkham Knight 

$5.80 

LEGO City Undercover 

$17

LEGO Worlds 

$13 

Killing Floor 2 

$27 

Prey 

$18 

The Evil Within 2 

$29 

 “The Razer Game Store sells only 100 percent licensed official keys,” Razer says. “We work with game publishers/developers directly to obtain their permissions and the keys that we are selling on this store.” 

The store is open for business now in North America, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. Head here to get one of 10,000 Steam keys for the indie game Furi as part of the launch celebration. 

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‘Pokémon Go’ is gamifying garbage and wants your help on Earth Day

Pokémon Go may have just found a way to gamify garbage collection. In honor of Earth Day, which will be observed on April 22, Niantic, the developer behind the popular Pokémon game, has revealed that it is leveraging its impressive powers of assembly in order to help save the planet, one piece of litter at a time. Thanks to a series of partnerships with local non-governmental organizations across the world, Niantic will be able to get players to pick up trash. And the more people who engage in this altruistic behavior, the greater their potential in-game rewards.

“All trainers will receive access to a special avatar item to celebrate Earth Day and those who work together to participate in the cleanups around the world will unlock unique in-game rewards for the entire world,” Niantic explained. “If 1,500 trainers attend the events around the world, 2x catch stardust for ground, water, and grass-type pokémon will be unlocked for 48 hours. If more than 3,000 trainers participate in the cleanup events, 3x catch stardust for ground, water, and grass-type pokémon for 48 hours will be unlocked for trainers around the world.” That is to say, if you have fellow Pokémon Go fans in your life, you’ll want to incentivize them to help you clean up your neighborhood.

As it stands, Niantic has a list of 37 total events taking place across 12 different countries. In order to sign up for a cleanup event, you need only to visit Pokémon Go’s Earth Day Cleanup page. We should point out that these events are not exactly located in central locations — only one is taking place in a major city: San Francisco and its event is at capacity. Meanwhile, there are six located throughout North Carolina.

As a whole, the events are slated to last for about two hours, but Niantic has suggested that you look into the specific times for the event you’re most interested in. Although you will certainly want to start your children on an eco-friendly path at a young age, the developer has noted that the events are open exclusively to folks aged 13 and older.

“Earth Day is an incredible movement and opportunity to team up with friends and neighbors to focus on making the world and our own communities healthy and sustainable,” Niantic CEO John Hanke said in a statement. So if you’re looking for a good thing to do this Earth Day, Pokémon Go may just provide you with an unexpected bit of fun.

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‘Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery’ features films’ actors, launches April 25

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, the mobile RPG that finally gives you the chance to enroll in Hogwarts, arrives on both iOS and Android on April 25.

Perhaps even more exciting than the looming launch of Jam City’s Hogwarts Mystery is the familiarity of the voices you will hear in classes and around the halls. Jam City enlisted the talent of numerous actors from the eight-part film series. Most notably, Academy Award winner Maggie Smith will reprise her role as Professor McGonagall, and Michael Gambon will once again help you feel at ease as Professor Dumbledore.

“If I could attend Hogwarts as a student, I would be most excited to attend the potions class taught by Severus because it is the most exotic,” Smith said.

Additionally, Warwick Davis returns as Professor Flitwick, along with Zoe Wanamaker as Madam Hooch, Gemma Jones as Madam Pomfrey, and Sally Mortemore as Madam Irma Pince.

Chris DeWolfe, co-founder and CEO of Jam City, said, “Our goal with Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is to make players really feel for the first time like they’re attending Hogwarts. By including these iconic and incredibly talented actors in the game, we come one step closer to truly giving fans their own Hogwarts experience.”

Hogwarts Mystery lets players create their own wizard and become a first-year Hogwarts student. In between classes you will make friends and rivals. Your choices shape the story and affect your trajectory as a witch or wizard. Hogwarts Mystery has been described as narrative-focused with role-playing game mechanics.

The story takes place in the mysterious years between the birth of Harry Potter and when he first steps foot on campus as a famous wizard. While it’s disappointing that we won’t get to take classes with Harry, we imagine references to him will be made by other characters. Besides well-known Hogwarts faculty, we know that both Bill Weasley, one of Ron’s older brothers, and Nymphadora Tonks will be featured as fellow students.

Hogwarts Mystery will be published under Warner Bros. new Harry Potter subsidiary, Portkey — a magical item from the world of Harry Potter that teleports those who grab onto it.

Android users can pre-register for Hogwarts Mystery now on Google Play ahead of its April 25 launch.

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Microsoft’s HoloLens could be gearing up to kick Intel to the curb

Microsoft’s next HoloLens headset is still in the works but according to leaks, it could feature some significant internal changes — including a new processor from an Intel competitor. According to Windows Central the new headset could sport some new hardware under the hood, as Microsoft contemplates replacing the HoloLens’ Intel processor with an ARM processor.

That’s interesting for a couple reasons, first because it means the HoloLens 2 — or whatever it ends up being called — could be built on Microsoft’s Always Connected PC platform, and could feature LTE connectivity. If you’re unfamiliar, Microsoft’s Always Connected PCs are Qualcomm-powered laptops designed for unparalleled battery life and mobile connectivity. That means the HoloLens’ new processor could be more powerful but consume less power overall. Which leads to another important development.

“HoloLens contains a custom multiprocessor called the Holographic Processing Unit, or HPU. It is responsible for processing the information coming from all of the on-board sensors, including Microsoft’s custom time-of-flight depth sensor, head-tracking cameras, the inertial measurement unit, and the infrared camera. The HPU is part of what makes HoloLens the world’s first – and still only – fully self-contained holographic computer,” said Microsoft’s Marc Pollefeys in a blog post describing the next-gen HPU.

So the next-gen HPU that lives in the HoloLens 2 will have the horsepower — and battery power thanks to that low-power ARM chip — to perform complex computing onboard without having to outsource compute-intensive tasks like voice recognition to cloud services.

“In addition to the new [holographic processing unit], we hear that the next HoloLens will be powered by an ARM processor and include LTE support for true-mobile holographic computing,” Windows Central reports. “Our sources suggest that the next HoloLens will be more mobile than ever, with longer battery life and an always-connected state. It is likely the HoloLens 2 will also include a wider field of view, something the original HoloLens caught a lot of flack for.”

Not only will these changes make the HoloLens 2 a much more capable device, but they have some far-reaching consequences as well. If Microsoft is going to replace the Intel chip currently in the original HoloLens with an ARM chip in the HoloLens 2, this would be the second high-profile company to reportedly plan for a jump to non-Intel processors for a flagship device.

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This twisted metal bridge in Amsterdam was 3D printed by welding robots

For the past three years, the Dutch 3D-printing company MX3D has been working to build what is possibly the world’s coolest steel footbridge. Designed to stretch across Amsterdam’s Oudezijds Achterburgwal canal, the quasi-organic-looking footbridge looks like something H.R. Giger would’ve created had he pursued a career in civil engineering.

Aside from its look, what makes the bridge exciting is its method of construction — which involved four special welding robots capable of laying down layers of molten metal.

“We use industrial robots that are commonly used in the car industry and fit them with high-end MIG-welding equipment,” Tim Geurtjens, co-founder of MX3D, told Digital Trends. “What turns that combination into a 3D printer is the software and strategies we have developed for driving the robot, and for getting a grip on the very complex welding process. Simply explained, we melt a thin wire of just about any metal you would like and deposit that upon the last layer. This way the part keeps on growing. The material that it results in is strong, durable and homogenous, just about as good as the material you put in.”

Despite this superior technology, however, Geurtjens says the process wasn’t always straightforward. “This whole project has been a great challenge,” he acknowledged. “All we knew was that we wanted to print a metal bridge with the technique we, at that time, had just started developing.”

Originally, the idea was to print the bridge “live” over the canal. But this ambitious idea — which would have made for spectacular viewing for passers-by — fell by the wayside, due to permits, budget, and time constraints. As a result, the team printed the bridge in their workshop. They also had to scale down some of the wackier aspects of the design, although the finished product still looks spectacular.

“In the design process, sometimes our imagination proved to be a bit too wild for the sometimes conservative construction world,” he said. “The level of complexity that could be achieved by our printers could not be handled by the structural engineering software for instance. However, I think that the final design shows very well what the possibilities of additive manufacturing in general and our printers in particular are. These organic, optimized forms would not have been possible to print with any other technique.”

Now that the bridge is finished, the team will next put it through its paces for load-bearing, using a variety of smart sensors and 3D scanners to test for its durability. By October 2018, final tests will be carried out and the bridge can then be installed.

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Google employees ask CEO to cancel the Pentagon Maven A.I. project

More than 3,000 Google employees wrote an open letter to CEO Sundar Pichai wanting out of what they term “the business of war.” Google senior engineers were among thousands of Google staff members who signed the letter, according to The New York Times.

The employees’ letter asks for the immediate cancellation of a specific military project and a more general policy statement about building technology for the military.

First, the letter requested that Google to immediately cancel its role in implementing Project Maven. The code name for a Department of Defense (DoD) Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team (AWCFT), Project Maven is an artificial intelligence (A.I.) program currently under development. Maven’s purpose is to assess drone video footage, Gizmodo reported.

Project Maven was established by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) for the Pentagon in April 2017. A letter under Deputy Secretary of Defense letterhead date stamped April 26, 2017 states the DoD needs to “integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning more effectively across operations to maintain advantages over increasingly capable adversaries and competitors.”

The Defense Deputy Secretary’s announcement says the initial intended use of Maven is to to provide “computer vision algorithms for object detection, classification, and alerts” for tactical Unmanned Aerial System (UAS), or drones.

The second, more general request in the Google letter, is that Pichai “draft, publicize, and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology.”

Participating in Project Maven will “irreparably damage Google’s brand and its ability to compete for talent,” the letter states. Google is “struggling to keep the public’s trust,” the letter continues, while many fear “biased and weaponized A.I.”

The letter refers to a Google core value statement: “Every one of our users is trusting us. Never jeopardize that. Ever.” The letter’s signatories assert that the contract with the DoD directly opposes this core value and places the company’s reputation at risk.

Former Google CEO and Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt was the keynote speaker at the November 2017 Center for a New American Security Artificial Intelligence and Global Security Summit. Schmidt was asked about the relationship between tech companies, A.I. research, and national security.

“There’s a general concern in the tech community of somehow the military-industrial complex using their stuff to kill people incorrectly,” Schmidt said.

The letter to current CEO Pichai is evidence that at least for those who signed it, the general concern Schmidt mentioned is real and specific.

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