Friday, May 13, 2011

Games maker Square Enix hacked

Hackers have broken into two websites belonging to Japanese video games maker Square Enix.

The company confirmed that the e-mail addresses of up to 25,000 customers who had registered for product updates may have been stolen as a result.

Resumes of 350 people applying for jobs in its Canadian office could also have been copied from the web servers.

Square Enix, which makes the popular Final Fantasy, Deus Ex and Tomb Raider games, apologised for the breach.

In a statement, it said: "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."

It is understood that the websites affected were Eidosmontreal.com, run by Square Enix's subsidiary Eidos, and Deusex.com, a promotional site for the forthcoming game, Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Scammer's dream

Graham Cluley, a consultant at security firm Sophos, warned that both leaks could cause problems for the individuals concerned.

"With the e-mail there is a danger that gamers could be e-mailed by someone pretending to be from the company who gets them to click on a link or run some malicious software," he told BBC News.

"The resumes are a blueprint for identity theft. They have everything that scammers want. The only thing missing is credit card information."

Square Enix emphasised that it does not hold customers' credit card data on its web servers.

It also said there was no evidence that the information had been distributed.

Mr Chippy

Shortly after the attack, both websites displayed the message "Owned by Chippy1337", as well as several other known hacker names, including Xero, XiX and Venuism.

However, it appears that some or all of those names may have been misappropriated by the real attackers.

Logs of Internet Relay Chat (IRC) conversations have appeared on the online, which appear to show the perpetrators discussing the hack as they carried it out.

In one section, the individuals taking part wrote: "We put it in the name of chippy1337 and write the names ryan, dfs, xero, nikon, xix, venuism and evilhom3r.

The same person then added the comment, "lol [laugh out loud]".

Security in the video games industry has been in the spotlight in recent weeks after the hacking attacks on Sony's PlayStation Network and SOE online multiplayer system.

The personal details of around 100 million users were stolen from the company's servers.

Investigations into the source of the data breach are continuing, with specialist computer forensic teams and the FBI getting involved.

The PlayStation Network remains offline, more than three weeks after the intrusion was discovered.



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Limewire pays $105m settlement

File-sharing software company Limewire has reached an out of court settlement with record labels that sued it for helping people pirate music.

The Lime Group, which developed the Limewire system, has agreed to pay $105m (�64.6m) to 13 music firms.

The figure is far less than the billion dollar bill for damages that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) claimed it was owed.

The prolonged legal fight has led to Limewire being shut down.

Mitch Bainwol, chairman of the RIAA - which represents record labels - said the organisation was pleased with the result.

"This hard fought victory is reason for celebration by the entire music community, its fans and the legal services that play by the rules," said Mr Bainwol in a statement.

Limewire was a program that used peer-to-peer technology to help people find media on other computers and let others see their libraries of files.

The RIAA first took legal action against Limewire in 2006 shortly after concluding a $115m settlement with peer-to-peer software maker Kazaa.

In May 2010, the judge overseeing the case ruled that Limewire and its creator Mark Gorton had infringed copyright and aided others in downloading pirated music.

Another court ruling in the case in October 2010 led to the effective closure of Limewire as it was banned from letting people search, download, upload or trade files using the program.

An official updated version of the program has been distributed that stops people using Limewire to swap files in this way.

However, a pirate edition has been produced that leaves those services intact.



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Twitter boost for Japan doctors

In the aftermath of the earthquake in Japan, Twitter is proving "an excellent system" for communicating with chronically-ill patients, say doctors.

In letters written to The Lancet, Japanese doctors say social networking sites have been vital in notifying patients where to get medication.

Although telephone networks were disrupted after the earthquake, internet access remained reliable.

But Japan must now strengthen its primary care system, they said.

The letters, which appear in the Correspondence section of The Lancet, were written by Japanese doctors across the country.

They talk about the health care consequences of the earthquake and tsunami disaster which occurred in Japan in March.

In one letter, Dr Yuichi Tamura and and Dr Keiichi Kukuda, from the department of cardiology at Keio University School of Medicine in Tokyo, described their initial concern over how to get drugs to patients with pulmonary hypertension after the disaster.

"Forming a supply chain for such drugs in the earliest stages of the disaster was difficult; however we found that social networking services could have a useful role."

"Start Quote

We were able to notify displaced patients via Twitter on where to acquire medications."

End Quote Dr Yuichi Tamura and Dr Keiichi Kukuda

Using the 're-tweet' facility on Twitter allowed information to be spread rapidly, they said.

"We were able to notify displaced patients via Twitter on where to acquire medications. These 'tweets' immediately spread through patients' networks, and consequently most could attend to their essential treatments."

On the move

But they also needed the hands-on help of countless medical staff to deliver drugs and oxygen.

"Our experience has shown that social networking services, run concurrently with physical support, were significant in triumphing over many difficulties in the recent catastrophe," they wrote.

In another letter, doctors describe how they transferred 600 dialysis patients from the area near the Fukushima nuclear power plant over 200km to another city to receive the urgent care they needed.

The patients were unable to bring their medical records with them on the journey from Iwaki to Niigata in the north west of Japan.

Dr Junichiro James Kazama, from Niigata University Hospital, said his team's experience of two previous earthquakes helped in the mass transfer.

"The transfer of 600 haemodialysis patients is an unprecedented event.

"However this mass relocation seems to be merely the beginning, because the accident recovery operation is still underway at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant," Dr Kazama wrote.

In other letters, doctors criticised the weakness of the Japan's primary care system, saying that patients normally have to go straight to hospital if they want to be treated for anything.

After the earthquake and tsunami, this situation created chaos.

"Hospitals were unable to tend to patients with non-urgent but important needs such as treatment of hypertension, diabetes, gastroenteritis, and so forth. Japan needs to strengthen its primary-care system," wrote Dr Jay Starkey from the University of Iowa and Dr Shoichi Maeda from Keio University in Tokyo.



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