Posts Tagged ‘Video game’

‘The Sims’ Facebook Game App Announced At E3 2011

Published by pratyushkp on June 8th, 2011 - in Social, Technology

Image via Wikipedia

Wish you could be on Facebook both as yourself and as a virtual avatar version of yourself? Good news: here come “The Sims.”

EA will launch “The Sims Social” for Facebook as an extension of the popular Sims franchise. According to Mashable, a Facebook page for the game is already up, though no information has yet been released about when we can expect the game to go live.

“The Sims Social” will let users create avatars to interact with other Facebook users. There will also be a mobile app to accompany the game.

The Sims first launched back in 2000 and has since sold over 140 million units worldwide. In the game, users can play the part of virtual characters who interact with each other, get jobs, have babies and die.

EA’s new release would pit them against social game powerhouse Zynga, which dominates Facebook with popular games like Farmville and Mafia Wars.

Over 800 people have already reviewed the app on Facebook, despite the fact that it is not yet active. 900 users have also Like the games page on Facebook.

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Related articles
  • The Sims Are Coming to Facebook (mashable.com)
  • The Sims Social: Yup, The Sims is finally coming to Facebook (games.com)
  • EA debuts a Sims social game (venturebeat.com)
  • EA’s Sims Studio & Playfish Bring The Sims to Facebook in The Sims Social (insidesocialgames.com)
  • The Sims creator Will Wright is making a Facebook game, and it’s not SimCity (games.com)
  • E3 2011: EA unveils strong games roster (guardian.co.uk)
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Super Mario data-slurping scare hits the Google Chrome web store

Published by pratyushkp on May 27th, 2011 - in Social, Technology

Fancy a game of Super Mario for free? Well, be careful – because although you may not have to pay any money for it, you might just be giving away a lot of your private data.

Blogger David Rogers has described how he stumbled across something interesting on the Google’s Chrome web store – a playable Super Mario app that – can also access data from all the websites you visit, your browsing history, and your bookmarks.

If you were a fan of Nintendo‘s dungaree-wearing moustachioed Italian plumber, would you bother to read the small print or just be terribly excited at the prospect of playing “Super Mario World” in your browser?

Of course, these apps (technically they’re browser extensions rather than apps..) aren’t endorsed or developed by Nintendo, and by downloading and playing these pale imitations you’re only encouraging others to rip-off the hard work of genius game developers from yesteryear.

But more than that, you could find that the lure of a video game classic could be being used to rip off data about you. Think of that next time your eyes glaze over when faced with small print about what an app is really going to do.

It appears that Google has now removed the errant apps from its Chrome Web Store, but one wonders how many other apps and extensions are designed to slurp up more of your data than reasonably expected.

There’s no indication that the unauthorised Mario games in the Chrome Web store are intentionally malicious, but they’re certainly playing pretty loose in terms of the data they want to access.

There have, of course, been viruses that have posed as Nintendo games in the past.

For instance, on the Windows platform a few years ago we saw the Romario worm, which launched one of the classic Super Mario Bros games, starring the starring the portly Italian plumber.

What would Princess Peach have to say about such shenanigans?

Source :- http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com

Related articles
  • ‘Super Mario’ runs amok in Chrome Web store (msnbc.msn.com)
  • Google Web Store quietly purged of nosy apps (go.theregister.com)
  • thechromesource Daily: Links for 5/24/11 (thechromesource.com)
  • Video: Chrome Web Store Publisher Forum (thechromesource.com)
  • Chrome Web Store Goes International And Gains In-App Purchases With 5% Flat Fee (techcrunch.com)
  • Nintendo’s Top Five Portable Mario Games (gonintendo.com)
  • Angry Birds is now in the Chrome Web Store for FREE! (ithinkdiff.com)
  • Super Mario data-slurping scare hits the Google Chrome web store (nakedsecurity.sophos.com)
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Eidos confirms website hack, email addresses and resumes stolen

Published by pratyushkp on May 14th, 2011 - in Social, Technology
Eidos Interactive

Image via Wikipedia

Eidos has revealed that resumes of job hunters and email addresses of video game fans have been stolen by hackers in an attack on the Eidos and “Deus Ex: Human Revolution” websites.

Square Enix, the parent company of Eidos, confirmed the hack in a PDF press release. (Why do companies publish their press releases as PDFs, anyway? That’s just daft.)

Here’s part of the statement from Square Enix:

Square Enix can confirm a group of hackers gained access to parts of our Eidosmontreal.com website as well as two of our product sites. We immediately took the sites offline to assess how this had happened and what had been accessed, then took further measures to increase the security of these and all of our websites, before allowing the sites to go live again.

Eidosmontreal.com does not hold any credit card information or code data, however there are resumes which are submitted to the website by people interested in jobs at the studio. Regrettably up to 350 of these resumes may have been accessed, and we are in the process of writing to each of the individuals who may have been affected to offer our sincere apologies for this situation. In addition, we have also discovered that up to 25,000 email addresses were obtained as a result of this breach. These email addresses are not linked to any additional personal information. They were site registration email addresses provided to us for users to receive product information updates.

There are two main risks here.

One threat is that if your email address is one of the 25,000 that has been stolen, you could receive a scam email (perhaps containing a malicious link or attached Trojan horse) that pretends to come from a video game company. After all, the hackers know that you’re interested enough in video games to give your email address to Eidos.

Secondly, the resumes from job hunters. This is a more serious problem. Just think of all the personal information you include on your CV: full name, date of birth, email and home address, telephone number, job history. This kind of information is a god-send to identity thieves interested in defrauding internet users.

So, it seems Sony is not the only video game company to be having problems with its computer security.

Lets hope the continuing stream of stories of companies having customer data stolen from them makes them take security more seriously in the future.

More information about the hack can be found on the KrebsOnSecurity blog.

Source :- http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com

Related articles
  • Eidos confirms website hack, email addresses and resumes stolen (nakedsecurity.sophos.com)
  • “Hacker attack breaches Square Enix Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Eidos web-sites” and related posts (videogamesblogger.com)
  • E-Mails and Resumes Stolen in Eidos Website Hacking (1up.com)
  • Fauxnonymous Strikes Again? Eidos Site Hacked, User Info Snatched (techland.time.com)
  • Eidos Hacked: Thousands of E-Mails, Resumes at Risk (wired.com)
  • Anonymous Hacks Eidos, Deus Ex Websites (escapistmagazine.com)
  • Report: Eidos and Deus Ex websites hacked, user information obtained (joystiq.com)
  • Games maker Square Enix hacked (bbc.co.uk)
  • Cyberwar continues: another game company hacked, info compromised (dvice.com)
  • Eidos servers hacked, was Deus Ex source code taken? (geek.com)
Tags: deus-ex-human-revolution, Eidos, Eidos Interactive, , Portable Document Format, Square Enix, ,
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