Magid on Tech hack game Increasingly interactive

Magid on Tech Increasingly interactive, data-collecting games highlight privacy concerns
By Larry Magid
Daily News columnist
Posted: 02/26/2013 05:08:23 PM PST
Updated: 02/26/2013 05:08:23 PM PST

As I watched Sony unveil the PlayStation 4 at a press conference on Feb. 20, I was struck by how much data the new device would be collecting from its users.

"We're changing the rule when it comes to social gaming," said David Perry, the CEO of Gaikai, a cloud-based gaming company that Sony acquired last year.

"What we're creating," said Perry, "is the fastest, most powerful network for gaming in the world. The PlayStation network will get to know you (emphasis added) by understanding your personal preferences and the preferences of your community and turns this knowledge into useful information that will help to enhance the future game play so like when your friends purchase a new game you'll know immediately so you can join into the action."

Perry also announced that Sony is adding connectivity to Facebook to further enhance what they know about players and their friends.

Another Sony executive, lead system architect Mark Cerny, pointed out that the company plans to preload games to your console based on what they know about your preferences: "If we know enough about you to predict your next purchase, then that game can be loaded and ready to go before you even click that button," he said.

As doddleNEWS blogger James DeRuvo commented hack game, "That's kinda cool, but also kinda creepy."

Sony is also enhancing what it calls the "spectator" experience in enabling people to share their game playing so that others can
Watch. "Your friends can actually look over your shoulder virtually and interact with you while you're playing; and if you allow them, your friends can also post comments to your screen; you can solicit support from them, or you can just trash-talk with them," Perry added. The new Playstation will also enable users to capture video (as well as still shots) from the game experience and share that with others on the network.

In a post (http://bit.ly/13wtxjR) on Livescience, Sean Captain points out the irony that two of the games featured at the PS4 debut actually focused on surveillance. He reminded me that Suckerpunch's game "inFAMOUS: Second Son" was all about state surveillance and quoted game developer Nate Fox's introduction of the game: "Right now, there are 4.2 million security cameras distributed all around Great Britain. That's one camera for every 14 citizens." Like Great Britain, wrote Captain, "the PS4 will also have a vast network of cameras -- not one for every 14 citizens, but one for every console owner."

The new Playstation will have a stereo camera that can track movements of the company's controller. Another game, Ubisoft's "Watch Dogs" "follows a vigilante character with access to all that information. As he walks through Chicago, message windows pop up, showing details about the people he passes," wrote Captain.

It's important to remember that the user does have some control over what is captured and who it is shared with. It's not yet clear to me how much information will be sent back to Sony's network, but Sony has made it clear that users will have control over hack game what they share. But it wasn't long ago that Sony's Online Entertainment and PlayStation Networks were hacked, potentially compromising information from 93,000 accounts.

As I pointed out in a recent Forbes column (http://onforb.es/ZHo9Oh), online privacy and security is a shared responsibility. We're vulnerable to what networks do by mistake or a result of a hack, what they deliberately do to monetize our data and how we sometimes jeopardize our own privacy and security by what we share.

Gaming is no exception. Whether it's the PlayStation 4 or connected use of the Xbox, the Wii, or mobile and online games, we need to be careful. Parents need to educate their children about privacy, safety and security. Strong passwords, knowing who you're interacting with and being discreet about what you do and say are paramount in the world of interactive gaming.

http://www.mercurynews.com/columns/ci_22674492/magid-tech-increasingly-interactive-data-collecting-games-highlight

Read More

How to Hack Android Games

How to Hack Android Games

Alright, we know this is lame. Cheating on Android games is not exactly an astute thing to do. Why cheat in a sport which is meant to be fun, right? And, besides, you’re competing with your friends, not fiends.

Frankly speaking, yes, we do acknowledge that fact, and thereby, we think it’s important to clear the perspective from which this tutorial has been written.Per se, we’re trying to help people- who are stuck at an exacting level, or who want to transfer their saved games to new device, or who want to develop games that cannot be forged using cheats.

Concisely speaking, this is an educational guide that, although hack game teaches you how to cheat Android games, but strongly discourages you from using these cheats in phony ways. Alternatively, you can use these tricks to emancipate yourself from the misery of being stuck at an imperious level- struggling to find a way out. Besides, understanding how these cheats work could help you in developing top-notch games that cannot be shammed. Remember, if you want to be bad, be bad for a reason. So, before attempting these tricks, make sure you have a good enough reason to support your choice.

What these cheats can’t do?

Before we discuss what the cheat does, and how it works, we would like to clear some air on what these cheats don’t do- or rather- mention the games on which these cheats won’t work.

The cheats won’t work if-
The game stores the in-game variables (ammo, health, wealth) on the server side.
The game requires a continuous network connection.

In short, these cheats cannot manipulate the data on the server side. It can only tamper the offline data stored by the game.

How to Hack Android Games?



GameCIH2- The Ultimate Cheat Engine


We kick-off with the numero uno cheat engine for Android- GameCIH2. It’s an app for rooted devices that runs in background and allows you to edit the in-game variables that reside in the temporary memory. In other words, the app allows you to edit the values of in-game attributes like wealth, ammo, health, etc. The app searches various memory locations for variables like ‘money’ through a trial-and-error method. GameCIH2 works for almost any game on the Android marketplace, and is one of the easiest ways to run low-level edits on game data.

Games that can be hacked using GameCIH2: Drag Racing, Temple Run, Racing Moto, Lane Splitter, Defender II, Assaulter, Myth Defense, Castle of Shadows, Toy Village, Can Knockdown, Subway Surfers, Fruit Ninja, Dream Heights, and many more.

GameCIH2 is activated by a hotkey that needs hack game to be pressed while playing the game. Pressing the hotkey while playing the game would open GameCIH2. Input the number of coins, money, health or ammo you wish to gain. Minimize GameCIH2, and continue with the game. The cheat should work, and you would gain the requested coins, ammo or health level. To know more about the cheat engine, follow this thread on xda Developers. The app is fairly easy to use, and as it works with most Android games, it’s, undoubtedly, the ultimate cheat engine for Android.

Game Guardian



There’s another app that you can try, in case the game you were unable to breakthrough using GameCIH2. The app isn’t as good as GameCIH2, as it doesn’t allow you to search for variables manually. So, in case the game has some weird name for coins, you cannot use Game Guardian. However, you can search for custom labels in various memory locations, and edit their values. The app also allows you to lock-in multiple addresses at one time, which, apparently, means you can apply multiple cheats at once. The steps for applying a cheat while playing a game are similar to GameCIH2.

Try this if GameCIH2 didn’t work for you. The following thread should answer all the questions you might have while using Game Guardian.

Download Game Guardian

If both the aforementioned methods don’t work, look for saved games

In case, you’re not able to cheat the game using GameCIH2 or Game Guardian, the best way out is to look for saved games. There are lots of websites on the internet that host saved/completed games. There are also patches that you can apply in order to gain unlimited ammo, power or health.

Just type the following string in Google: <”Game Name”> + <saved games>. Once you’ve downloaded the saved game, you just need to copy the content to /data/app (in case you haven’t moved the app to SD card). In case you find it tough to find saved games, check out the last section of this article.

How these cheats work?

In case you’re interested how these cheats work, here’s the dig. The cheat engine tries to access the memory location held by the game that stores the important variables. Once the cheat engine finds the memory address, it locks that particular memory location, and prevents the game from altering the value of the label. The tricky part of the cheat is to pinpoint the memory location that corresponds to the looked up attribute. Once the memory location is found, the cheat engine just has to edit the values, and lock the location for rewrite. The only way to prevent cheat engines from editing your in-app variables is to store the data on the server side.

How to transfer games across devices?

Sometimes, you’re not looking for any serious hacks/cheats, but merely want to transfer your saved game data from one device to another. Won’t it be amazing if you could play a game on your smartphone, and continue the game on your tablet from the very point you left it? Well, you can do that with manifold tools available mentioned below:

Data Sync: The most convenient app for backing up game data, and transferring them to other devices. Data Sync allows you to share app data between Android devices. Data Sync works over a Wi-Fi network, but it can be integrated with cloud services like Dropbox and Box as well. It also supports syncing data across devices through Bluetooth and NFC. This is an amazing app in case you want to sync the game data between various devices, and start the game on your tablet, right from where you left off on your smartphone. (10/10)

GameOn: Game On is a network of players across the world that upload the saved files, which in turn can be used by other players to progress through levels, and gain XP. The Game On network currently hosts 60 games. Looking up for a saved progress and installing it on your smartphone is easy. It’s an awesome way to get back into track, in case you have lost all your game progress due to data wipe. (8/10)



Save Share: The SaveShare application for Android works just like Data Sync app. In case the Data Sync app doesn’t work on your smartphone or you find it incompetent, you can give this one a try! (9/10)

If you have any more hacking/cheating tips for Android games, do share them with us.

[Tip-Off: While using the games, avoid setting ostentatious high-scores on the game leader-board, as most people would take the hint that you have cheated to get the score. The secret of success, undeniably, lies in hiding your sources. So, make sure you cover your tracks and do not aim for a pompous score. Also, please note that some cheats are irreversible. For example, if you try any of the cheats to get a high-score in game in order to be on the top of the Leader-board, please remember that there’s no way to revert it. Games like Subway Surfers tie the user’s statistics with their Facebook account. So, you won’t be able to undo the damage in case something goes wrong.
Read more at http://thedroidguy.com/2013/02/how-to-hack-android-games-tutorial/#PMRVZ8IHdDGGyC6Q.99

Read More

OC Carjacker Killings: Too Similar to Popular Video hack Game?

To video game aficionados, Tuesday morning's deadly carjacking rampage was eerily familiar.
A man shoots a woman in his home in the early morning hours and flees the scene in an SUV. After his tire goes flat in a parking lot, he exits with a shotgun.
Seeing the threat, another driver guns it, gets shot in the head, but still manages to drive away.
The shooter runs to a nearby gas station and steals a pickup. He takes the truck onto the freeway, blasting three vehicles with his gun before crashing on an off-ramp.
Finding an elderly man inside a luxury car, the shooter forces him from the vehicle at gunpoint, then shoots him three times.
The killer steals the luxury car, drives it to another parking lot, fatally shoots another man in the head, then steals his car and heads back to the freeway.
The police alert is high. Once authorities close in, the killer shoots himself in the head.
Game over.
All of these events, which took place Tuesday morning in Orange County, can also happen in the video game world of Grand Theft Auto.

‘Gamer Freak’

In the aftermath of Ali Syed's deadly rampage, investigators seized the computer in his Ladera Ranch bedroom, according to Orange County Sheriff's Department spokesman Jim Amormino. The device is now waiting in line behind Christopher Dorner's computer at the Orange County Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory in Orange, he said.
In the absence of a suicide note or obvious motive, investigators hope the computer holds clues. In particular, detectives are searching for connections between Syed, 20, and his first victim, Courtney Aoki, an aspiring actress from Buena Park who also worked for an escort service, according to KTLA News. They're also trying to piece together why Syed might have gone on a murderous carjacking rampage that left four dead, including himself hack game
Part of the answer could involve video games such as Grand Theft Auto. Amormino wouldn't say which video games were stored on Syed's computer, but said there were several. He also described Syed as a “gamer freak” who studied computers at Saddleback College.

Rockstar Controversy

Grand Theft Auto is one of the most popular and violent video games of the last decade.
“It’s basically a game where you run around a city like L.A. or San Francisco, and you’re a hitman type of guy working for different gangs,” said Ross Watters, a 25-year-old Costa Mesa resident who played the game as a teenager, when it debuted.
There are prostitutes, murders, violence and carjackings, Watters said. Although the plotline bears a close resemblance to Syed's crime spree, Watters said, he thinks it’s a stretch to imply a violent video game could lead to real-life violence.
“I grew up playing all that kind of stuff, and I don’t go around shooting people,” Watters said. “I think someone who would do that has underlying mental issues.”
A spokesman for Take Two Interactive Software Inc., the company behind the video game, did not return calls for comment.
The company has long been a target for critics of videogame violence. In 2009, lawyers for an 18-year-old accused of killing police officers in an Alabama hack game shooting spree blamed Grand Theft Auto for the teen’s actions. The National Institute Of Media And The Family issued a warning about violence in the game.
In 2005, hackers discovered an otherwise inaccessible mini-game in GTA San Andreas, the bestselling video game in the U.S. in 2004. The hack allowed players to simulate sex with the main character's girlfriends.
Called the "hot coffee mod" controversy, the discovery led lawmakers to take a closer look at the video game industry. Then-Sen. Hillary Clinton said, "The widespread availability of sexually explicit and graphically violent video games makes the challenge of parenting much harder."
She called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the game.
Grand Theft Auto V, a new version of the game set in a fictional Southern California city called Los Santos, will be ready for release this year, according to a press release by Rockstar Games.
TELL US WHAT YOU THINK IN THE COMMENTS
is it fair to link video game violence with real life crimes? If so, what are the implications?
OC Patch staff contributed to this report.
http://missionviejo.patch.com/articles/o-c-carjacker-killings-similar-to-popular-video-game

Read More

Hack findings highlight China, U.S. in game of spy vs. spy

A large-scale cyberespionage operation recently linked to China's military is unlikely to change the longstanding game of spy vs. spy with the U.S., experts say.
Security company Mandiant said in a report released Tuesday that a group of cyberspies it had watched for sometime was similar in mission, capabilities and resources to a secretive group called PLA Unit 61398, which is run by China's People's Liberation Army. The evidence collected by Mandiant indicates the two groups are the same.
The discovery does not mark an hack game escalation in Chinese cyberspying, which has been on the rise for sometime. Nor does it bring the U.S. and China any closer to cyberwar, as some have reported, experts say. That's because Chinese activities remain focused on stealing government secrets and intellectual property from private industry, including information technology, defense and aerospace, energy, transportation, communications and chemical.

The Mandiant report also showed that the group it watched, called APT1, was increasingly focused on stealing information from companies involved in U.S. critical infrastructure, such as electrical power grids, gas lines and waterworks, The New York Times reported.
While certainly a major concern, activities involving the gathering of information remain spying and are not militarily a cyberattack, which depending on the damage could lead to cyberwar. An example of a true cyberattack would be the Stuxnet malware, reportedly designed by the U.S. and Israel. The malware destroyed centrifuges in Iran's nuclear facilities.
"It's cyberwar when you break something and it hurts bad enough that you think it's war," said Stewart Baker, a partner at Steptoe & Johnson and a former assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security.
With cyberespionage, there is no diplomatic solution. That's because both sides spy on each other and neither would admit it. Key to any successful spy operation is to deny involvement, in the absence of direct evidence to prove otherwise.
"I'm not aware of anybody who thinks that we can, or maybe not even should, try to reach an agreement on espionage with China or anybody else," Baker said.
While there is no diplomatic solution, the U.S. can take other steps against China to create a tacit agreement on the limits of cyberspying, experts say. For example, the U.S. could use its own spy networks to feed information to Chinese dissidents to bring more political grief to the Chinese government.
"What we really have to do is punish them for theft," said Paul Rosenzweig, a former deputy assistant secretary for policy at DHS and the founder of Red Branch Law & Consulting.
The area where punishment would be most effective is in the theft of intellectual property from private industry. U.S. laws prevent the government from hacking private companies in China, but law enforcement could use those laws to prosecute Chinese companies that use stolen IP.
Those companies can be barred from doing business in the U.S., and cyberthieves can be prosecuted, if they are arrested in a country outside of China and if the U.S. can extradite them, experts say.
Because of the close economic ties between China and the U.S., both countries have options for pressuring each other, while not crossing a line that would threaten their respective economies. In the case of the U.S, it could enact sanctions against China, leveraging the fact that the U.S. market is the largest buyer of Chinese goods.
For now, there is no international organization hack game for either the U.S. or China to turn to.
"Corporate espionage almost certainly constitutes an unfair trade practice, but national governments, including the U.S., have hesitated bringing actions against the most egregious violators to the World Trade Organization for economic and political reasons," said Jacob Olcott, principal consultant for cybersecurity at Good Harbor Consulting.
In time, relations between China and the U.S. over cyberespionage could resemble those between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
"I suspect that like the Cold War, at some point the U.S. and China will come to some sort of tacit agreement on what is acceptable and what isn't," Murray Jennex, a cybersecurity expert and associate professor at San Diego State University, said in an email.

http://www.csoonline.com/article/729190/hack-findings-highlight-china-u.s.-in-game-of-spy-vs.-spy

Read More

Kids using code to hack game sites

According to the report from antivirus company AVG detailed evidence of programmes written to “steal” virtual currency.

In one case, researchers were able to reverse-engineer “amateur” code to reveal data about the identity of one child in Canada.
The company said children must be educated on coding “rights and wrongs”.

“As more schools are educating people for programming in this early stage, before they are adults and understand the impact of what they’re doing, this will continue to grow.” said Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer at AVG.

The researchers found that many instances hack game of malware targeting games popular with children shared the same characteristics.

Today's Newspaper
Top story     National
World     Business
Sports     Karachi
Lahore     Islamabad
Peshawar     Editorial
Opinion     Newspost

More from Islamabad

 CDA starts beautification of Jubilee Park in Sector F-7      Chinese investment in the Gwadar port is purely economic
 Senator Razina Alam Khan’s ‘Suno Pyari Beti’ launched      Japanese calendars exhibited at RAC
 Urdu as official language stressed      ‘The News’ staffer grieved
 Violators pay for breaching smoking laws in capital      Healthy teeth
 Older people’s needs being ignored in emergencies, disasters      There are miscreants in the govt ranks: Bizenjo
 http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-6-158944-Kids-using-code-to-hack-game-sites

Read More