VOGH Exclusive: Xbox Live Outage Caused For Networking Misconfiguration, Not Hacker Attack

Microsoft Said Xbox Live Outage Caused For Networking Misconfiguration During Routine Maintenance, Not Hacker Attack 

Xbox Live -one of the world's most popular and usually very reliable gaming network which rarely has unexpected outages, nor does Microsoft ever take it down for any extended period of time. But accident occurs, and it happened in last Sunday. The software giant and the developer of Xbox - Microsoft has reported a significant Xbox Live outage, rendering the service unavailable since earlier last 13th afternoon, smack in the middle of the peak weekend usage period. The outage is preventing users from signing in to Xbox Live, blocking access to the online services normally available through the console. While acknowledging the issue, on their official Xbox Live Status page Microsoft said “There is still an issue members are having signing in to Xbox LIVE, we greatly appreciate you sticking it out with us while we work as hard as we can to get this problem fixed. Keep checking back here every 30 minutes for another update on our progress.” This update came from Microsoft at 3:30 Pacific time on 13th of April. As soon as this story get spotted, several hikes rises. Among this buzz, it was a few unnamed hacker who took credit of the Xbox outage, while declaring that a cyber attack. Another buzz which just got spread so quickly, was that the outage of Xbox Live network has been caused by hacker collective Anonymous.  Here we must have to say that those buzz have some solid reasons as couple of months ago Windows Azure faced an organized cyber attack which effected the service of Azure storage, Xbox Live and 52 other. And that outage or in other word service interruption stays for 12 long hours. But unlike earlier, this time the issue get resolved immediately. Within one hour all the service get restored and came back to its normal order. On the same Xbox Live Status page Microsoft said “If you were one of the members who was having issues signing in to Xbox LIVE, good news! This issue has been fixed! Thank you so much for your patience during this time, feel free to go enjoy your favorite games and content!”

So far we have discussed about the story of the outage and it's restoration. Now we will talk about the cause of this interruption. As I have said earlier that the rumor of hacker's attack was there which was claiming responsibility of the Xbox Live outage. But in reality it was not due to cyber attack but some internal network problems. In their official respond of the situation and those buzz Microsoft completely dines all those rumors and said  "The Xbox Live service outage on 13 April resulted from networking misconfiguration during routine maintenance and was in no way related to false claims of hacking the service." 

While talking about Xbox outage, we would like to remind you that - another world famous gaming console 'PlayStation' had fallen victim to cyber attacks. It was Anonymous who hit Sony PSN and caused massive outage, data leak and many other devastating damages. 

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#OP maZYNGA: Anonymous Targeted Zynga, Leaked Confidential Documents & Games

#OP maZYNGA: Anonymous Targeted Zynga, Leaked Confidential Documents & Games

Infamous hacker collective Anonymous again vows to destroy the most popular social network Facebook and one of its associate along with one of the best place to play online games Zynga. The offensive has been  named Operation MaZynga or dubbed #OP MaZynga. According to a post on AnonNews forum, the hacker group threatened to to take Facebook down on November 5 and release Zynga games to the public on that day for free if Zynga doesn't stop its alleged plans for massive layoffs and offshoring of jobs. Anonymous says that it has obtained secret documents about Zynga's strategy which includes a "massive layoff of a thousand people." The hacker group is ticked off about the jobs. "With a billion dollars cash sitting in a bank we do believe that such actions are an insult to the population and the behaviour of corporations like Zynga must change," it said. Last week, Zynga reported that it has $1.6 billion in cash, equivalents and marketable securities and confirmed that it laid off 150 people. As for rumors of bigger layoffs, these have been circulating for a while.

#OP MaZynga. Press Release From Anonymous:- 

Transcript:-

"Zynga customers and Facebook users , We are anonymous . During the last few days anonymous has been targeting Zynga for the outrageous treatment of their employees and their actions against many developers. 

We have come to believe that this actions of Zynga will result in massive layoff of a thousand people and legal actions against everyone that speaks to the public about this plan.

It will also come to end of the US game market as we know it as all this jobs will be replaced in other more convenient financial countries.

With a billion dollars cash sitting in a bank we do believe that such actions are an insult to the population and the behaviour of corporations like Zynga must change.

Anonymous could not allow this to happen so it's starting to release confidential documents we have leaked on this plan

As we speak we are planning to release also all the games we've taken from their servers for free.

That being said we will stop the idea of the distribution of such games if Zynga will cease immediately the plan.

The leaked strategy of Zynga , transcript:

Following the preliminary announced of this week the final strategy for the next two quarters has been successfully set to delivery by november 23 an additional but of 800 jobs with further raising of new capital from the market to support businesses.

We've identified our global gambling strategy with bwin.party and as we speak discussions are progressing with a partner to cover the US market.

Work is focused and on-going to completely outsource our development teams in our offices in Bangalore , India to hedge our position in the long term.

We've identified key new products from third parties such as Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime , Shove Prod and Music Invaders in which we are starting business contacts to buy these IP for transaction value of approximately 20 million.

We strongly believe we will conclude these deals this month and compete with this titles against mobile competitors with ease.

Our business continues to evolve and we must evolve with it. We operate in a exciting and challenging industry and I am very pleased that our senior leadership team continue to strengthen and develop with us." 

 ******

Here are the documents it mentions:-

http://www.multiupload.nl/DELBKM7I2I mazyngaop_docs.zip (36.41 MB)

http://www.multiupload.nl/WV48I345JM ANON_MA_ZYNGA.7z (412.59 MB)

Not that above files have already been removed for “copyright infringement”. Here we want yo give you reminder that in 2011 Anonymous openly declared to take down Facebook. The operation was dubbed #Op-Facebook and Anonymous told that they will hit FB on the 5th of November last year. But in reality it was just a threat and as expected Anonymous failed to execute Operation Facebook. This year also members of Anonymous vows to re-engage the same operation on the same day (November 5th) also known as Guy Fawkes Day, named for the English historical figure from which Anonymous derives inspiration. So far neither Facebook, nor Zynga responded this message of the hacker group, so lets wait till November 5th, and stay tuned with VOGH for all the latest update on this & also other stories on cyber security, hacking & infosec industry. 

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11,000 Guild Wars 2 Account Hijacked On a Campaign By Chinese Hackers

11,000 Guild Wars 2 Account Hijacked On a Campaign By Chinese Hackers 

After the security breach on Gamigo & Blizzard yet again online gamer's have fallen victim to cyber criminals. The second sequel of the popular Guild Wars multiplayer online RPG by ArenaNet has been released less than two weeks ago, and player accounts are already being heavily targeted by what seems to be a dedicated account hijacking campaign coming from China. ArenaNet and publisher NCSoft have been in touch to dispute the number of Guild Wars 2 accounts that have been hacked, saying in a statement: "Over the past three days we've received approximately 8,500 new support tickets related to hacked accounts and other blocking login issues." The accounts of an estimated 11,000 Guild Wars 2 players have been hacked - and developer ArenaNet says they only have themselves to blame for not using unique usernames and passwords. In a post on the official Guild Wars 2 Wiki, the developer says that its customer support team is treating the recovery of hacked accounts as a priority, and urges those who have escaped unscathed to change their passwords as a precaution.

"Hackers have lists of email addresses and passwords taken from other games and websites, and collected through spyware, and are systematically testing Guild Wars 2 looking for matching accounts," the post reads. "To protect yourself, use a strong, unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you've never used anywhere else. "If your current password isn't unique to Guild Wars 2, change it today. Do not under any circumstances use the same password for Guild Wars 2 as you do for your email account. "We've observed hack attempts against hundreds of thousands of accounts that don't even exist. To protect those people in case they purchase Guild Wars 2 and create an account, we will now disallow customers from picking passwords that we've previously seen used in a hack attempt." 

The company has so far received around 11,000 support requests related to hacked accounts, and is likely to receive more as time goes by, Here we want to draw the attention of our readers that not only  Guild Wars  2 players,  In the last few months we have been a slew of attacks against the following sites: Yahoo, LinkedIn, eHarmony, Formspring, Android Forums, Gamigo,  Nvidia, Blizzard and  Philips. Earlier in 2011 we have seen several other gaming sites became victim of cyber attacks, among them there are Square Enix, Eidos, MapleStory & so on. So all customers are advised to change their passwords now to a long and unique one for Guild Wars 2 that they never before used for any other game or website. 

-Source (Edge, Net Security)

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Wikipad -Android Based Gaming Tablet Coming on October For $499

Wikipad -Android Based Gaming Tablet Coming on October For $499

The long awaited gaming tablet with detachable controls based on Android  is set for release on October 31st. The mobile gaming tablet is named 'Wikipad' will be available for $499. Online retailing store, GameStop which has tied-up with Wikipad, has already started taking pre-orders for the Tegra-3 based tablet. Furthermore, those who pre-order a Wikipad will receive value added extras, including one issue of the GameStop-owned Game Informer digital magazine, and "full-length titles." Though these games were not announced, but GameStop plans to reveal them soon. The Wikipad will support games downloadable through PlayStation Mobile, Nvidia's Tegra Zone, Google Play and other forthcoming platforms.

Wikipad sports a 10.1-inch IPS display and will have a 1280×800 resolution. It is powered by an Nvidia Tegra 3 processor clocking at 1.4GHz. It will come with 1GB RAM and 8GB on-board storage expandable to 64GB. To put your game face on, just attach the gaming controller which features multiple buttons and analog joysticks.

Wikipad has also partnered with Gaikai for streaming video games. Gaikai, previously known as the Sony Cloud service, was bought by the company for $380 million. Gamers will be able to stream Gaikai's library of titles to their Wikipad, including big titles like Battlefield 3, Mass Effect 3 and Saints Row: The Third. 

About Wikipad:- Wikipad Inc. is a leading developer and designer of video game console tablets and devices. Headquartered in Los Angeles, California, Wikipad Inc. is uniquely positioned as pioneers and innovators in the mobile entertainment world. Wikipad is leading the way with its accessible and comfortable consumer devices focused on video game content while enabling traditional functions such as productivity, web, education, media and music content.

For Pre-Order Booking Click Here

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