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Gravities by Cinta Vidal

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Hackers Claim Credit for Pokemon Go No-Go

Pokemon Go, the augmented reality game that has become an overnight sensation, experienced sluggish performance over the weekend, possibly from a hacker attack on its login servers.

Shortly after Pokemon Go devs tweeted that the game was rolling out to 26 additional countries, this tweet appeared:

  

Notoriety Hounds

Hacker groups often try to build their Net cred with this kind of attack, observed Stephen Gee, senior product manager for security at Barracuda.

"They wanted to build a name for themselves by taking down this server," he told TechNewsWorld.

One of the groups claiming responsibility for the slowdown, OurMine, recently gained some notoriety by hacking into the Twitter accounts of high-profile people like Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

If the hackers disrupted Pokemon Go, it's something the system architects should have been prepared for, maintained Stephen Gates, chief research intelligence analyst for NSFocus.

"Organizations that provide this type of online gaming experience must expect to come under the crosshairs of DDoS attackers at some point," he told TechNewsWorld.

"In the world of online gaming, the motivations for DDoS attacks come in several flavors," Gates said. "Notoriety is always at the top of the list, and DDoS for ransom is a likely second."

Availability Is Milk of Gaming

Availability is the foundation of the online gaming experience, noted Gates.

"Take away availability, and so much for the experience. That is why a comprehensive plan to defeat DDoS attacks should be implemented before going live as hybrid cloud and on-premises defenses can easily defeat these attacks," he explained.

"Often, when unexpected outages or latency occurs to an online game making the game unenjoyable, people will either complain quite loudly or stop playing the game altogether," Gates added. "In this case, the Pokemon team needs to shore up their DDoS defenses or potentially lose many of their followers."

Richer Pickings

For hackers less concerned with notoriety and more concerned with dollar signs, the Pokemon Go servers could be a gold mine of information.

"Pokemon Go has millions of users registered," explained Jaime Blasco, chief scientist at AlienVault.

"If a hacker is able to access the servers, it might be possible to steal passwords -- depending on how well those are secured -- and email addresses," he told TechNewsWorld. "These credentials can later be used to access other services where people might be reusing the same password, or they could even sell the credentials on the black market."

Although the Pokemon Go team quickly ironed out initial privacy problems, the way the game shares data may raise concerns among some players, Blasco warned. For example, any information collected by the game may be shared with third parties unknown to a player.

"If you don't like the sound of that," Blasco said, "I recommend creating a special email account to play these games, and never use your real name or personal data. That way the location data cannot be linked to your real name at any point."

Fake Pokemon Go

A common tactic deployed by Net bandits when a game gains popularity is to release fake versions of the game and distribute them outside the mainstream app stores. Fake versions of Pokemon Go already have been spotted in the wild.

"These fake apps usually come bundled with malware or other malicious pieces of software that get installed in your phone at the same time," Blasco explained. "People downloading the Pokemon app and any other apps should always use the official Google and Apple stores and double-check that the app is the official one."

Clinton Campaign Latest Target of Hackers Linked to Russia

The campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is the latest possible victim of a series of hack attacks some cybersecurity experts have linked to the Russian government, according to press reports Friday.

Campaign officials acknowledged that an analytics program it uses, which is maintained by the DNC, was accessed in a breach discovered earlier this month. However, its internal systems apparently were not compromised.

The FBI reportedly is investigating the Clinton campaign hack along with a related cyberbreach at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the official campaign arm of Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives.

The latest news comes less than a week after Wikileaks published nearly 20,000 emails stolen in the earlier hack attack on the Democratic National Committee.

The bureau is probing whether the latest attacks are linked to the DNC breach.

"The DCCC can confirm that we have been the target of a cybersecurity incident," said Meredith Kelly, national press secretary of the organization. "Upon discovering the issue, we immediately took action and engaged with CrowdStrike, a leading forensic investigator, to assist us in addressing this incident.

Based on the information the DCCC has to date, it appears that the breach is similar to prior incidents, including the DNC breach that is already under investigation, Kelly said, adding that the organization takes the matter very seriously.

"With the assistance of leading experts, we have taken and are continuing to take steps to enhance the security of our network in the face of these events," she added. "We are cooperating with the federal law enforcement with respect to their ongoing investigation."

  

CrowdStrike Probes

CrowdStrike, which has been working with the DNC to investigate the earlier breach, confirmed that it also is working with the DCCC.

"We can confirm that the DCCC has hired CrowdStrike following the DNC breach and we are investigating the matter," spokesperson Ilina Dimitrova told TechNewsWorld. "This is an ongoing investigation and we're not able to provide further comments."

The FBI issued a statement acknowledging it was aware of media reports regarding cyberintrusions involving "multiple political entities," and that it was working to determine the accuracy, nature and scope of "these matters."

The bureau takes allegations of intrusions seriously, it said, promising that anyone who posed a threat in cyberspace would be held accountable.

The FBI earlier this week launched a probe into the DNC breach, after questions surfaced about the possibility that Russian hackers delivered the stolen emails to Wikileaks in an attempt to help the presidential campaign of Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Trump set off a firestorm when he urged Russia to find and disclose more than 30,000 deleted emails belonging to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Trump's remarks came after the Clinton campaign raised suspicions that Russian hackers, working with Russian intelligence services, had coordinated the leaks of DNC emails to help the Trump campaign. Trump campaign officials publicly ridiculed the Clinton campaign's allegations as an attempt to divert the public's attention.

However, following withering attacks from national security experts and both Democratic and Republican party officials, Trump later backtracked from encouraging Russia to find and expose Clinton's private emails, saying his comments were meant to be sarcastic.

Vulnerable Systems

The breaches raise troubling questions about the security systems of various public agencies, as well as the integrity of the presidential election itself, said Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

"EPIC said at the outset of this election year that data protection is the most important, least well understood issue in the country today," he told TechNewsWorld. "All across the U.S., consumers confront issues of identity theft, data breach and financial fraud. Yet Washington has been unwilling to update U.S. privacy law or back strong security techniques."

"The consequences are growing more severe," he added, yet not a single speaker addressed the issue at either convention.

The U.S. can't rely on its adversaries playing by the rules, warned Andrea Castillo, program manager for the Technology Policy Program at George Mason University's Mercatus Center.

The government must take proactive steps to strengthen the U.S. cyberinfrastructure, he told TechNewsWorld.

"There's been a lot of speculation, but I think the takeaway is more about our generally poor cybersecurity," said Castillo. "A hack like this was more a matter of when, not if."

Silicon Valley Debates Thiel's Money Man Role in Gawker Suit

The digital media world was abuzz last week when news surfaced that billionaire Peter Thiel, one of PayPal's cofounders, had provided financial backing for a defamation lawsuit against Gawker Media.

The suit stemmed from Gawker's publication of a sex tape involving ex-WWE superstar Terry Bollea, better known as "Hulk Hogan." A Florida jury awarded Bollea US$140 million in March.

Thiel, a Facebook board member and longtime financial supporter of the Committee to Protect Journalists, confirmed that he backed the Hogan case in part due to his concerns about Gawker Media's journalism tactics.

Gawker's former site, Valleywag, outed Thiel as gay in a 2007 series of articles that also affected the lives of many of Thiel's friends. Although Thiel was a wealthy public figure, the publication drew substantial criticism from media analysts.

  

Guardian Angel

Thiel's financial support in the Hogan case was motivated by a desire to deter the publication from causing similar damage to those with fewer resources to respond, he told The New York Times.

The publication was bullying people to get attention in the absence of any public interest, he said.

Thiel provided about $10 million to help finance the Hogan legal case, according to the Times.

Hogan rose to fame as the WWF heavyweight Champion in the 1980s and then starred in several films, including the Rocky series. Although he amassed millions of dollars through his wrestling and entertainment endeavors, his wealth does not approach that of Thiel, who is said to be worth about $2.7 billion.

Silent Partner

Last week's hubbub followed reports that Gawker founder Nick Denton was looking to sell after a court last week denied the company's motion to retry the Hogan case and the award amount was allowed to stand.

"We've always said we expect to prevail on appeal and we've always said we're exploring contingency plans of various sorts so that's not new," Gawker Media said in a statement provided to TechNewsWorld by spokesperson Lexi Georgiadis.

Gawker earlier this year announced a deal to sell a minority stake to Columbus Nova Technology Partners in order to fund growth initiatives and pay for the Hogan defense.

"Everyone take a breath. We've had bankers engaged for quite some time given the need for contingency planning around Facebook board member Peter Thiel's revenge campaign -- and that's how the Columbus Nova investment was arranged," Gawker Media added. "We recently engaged [Houlihan Lokey Managing Director] Mark Patricof to advise us and that seems to have stirred up some excitement, when the fact is that nothing is new."

Ethical Questions

It's not uncommon for the super wealthy to go after media organizations, but Thiel's secret support in the Hogan case adds a new wrinkle, said Rick Edmonds, media business analyst at the Poynter Institute.

"It's relatively common for the rich to sue news media just to try to get even, whether or not they have a case," he told TechNewsWorld. "This is a different twist, finding someone else with a better case and trying to damage the outlet that way. That may be dubious ethically, but I'm pretty sure it's not illegal nor does it raise a First Amendment issue."

It's unlikely that Facebook will be damaged by this, but there's a slight chance that it could face pressure to part with Thiel, "because he is too hot and divisive" on media-related issues, Edmonds said.

Thiel and the Thiel Foundation provided significant financial support to the Committee to Protect Journalists between July 2008 and January 2013, said Executive Director Joel Simon.

"As a free expression organization, we have a wide variety of supporters with a wide variety of views," he observed.

As for Thiel backing the Hogan case, "we support the right of individuals in the United States and around the world to seek civil redress in cases of defamation," Simon added. "However we do not support efforts to abuse the process by seeking to punish or [bankrupt] particular media outlets."

"The Internet right to publish bad things does have limits," said Peter S. Vogel, a partner at Gardere.

"What Peter Thiel did to fund the Hulk Hogan case is not so unusual," he told TechNewsWorld, noting that third parties such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the American Civil Liberties Union often "pursue litigation to help folks." 

By David Jones technewsworld