The edition you are currently reading is the 227th full edition. To read any older editions of HF News, please go here.
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Official Group OMC Auction Postponed
On February 10th, 2015, an attack on AllCrypt occurred and OMC wallets had massive amounts of OMC stolen from them. Initially, Omniscient only disabled OMC Award and 3PIC upgrade purchases in the wake of the incident but was later forced to cancel the official group OMC auction as well. The OMC team is currently working on resolving the issue but they are not sure when that will be. In addition, OMC mining is suspended as well. In spite of all this, Omniscient is optimistic about the future of Omnicoin and is hoping that things will resume to normal in a week or two. You can read more about the current Omnicoin status, here. You can also read about the work done by the Omnicoin team to resolve this issue in the thread Omnicoin Back Online by Abraham Lincoln.
HF Connection Issues
On February 10th, 2015, an attack disrupted CloudFlare and users reported having connection problems as a result on browsing Hack Forums. Needing help to resolve the issue, Omniscient opened up a thread asking for users that were experiencing this to private message him certain information. However it turned out that there was no issue and instead it was just a forum timeout with no errors coming from CF or HF. You can read more about this, here.
---[News] Omnicoin Problem - Omniscient ---A recent attack on the OMC currency has caused a lot of drama. The purchase of 3P1C and the OMC award has been disabled for now.
---Omnicoin Status - Omniscient ---Due to the recent attack on OMC, the recent OMC group auction has been cancelled. Read for more information!
Informational Threads
---Priority #1 for Omnicoin - Omniscient ---Omniscient talks about the future of OMC. Check out the thread to help out and give your opinions and suggestions.
Justin Timberlake: Welcome to the 227th edition of the HF News, today I'm joined by Realizm. What's up man? Realizm: Nothing much, just got done playing some Call of Duty with Prada and Chief.
Justin Timberlake: 2 great members in my opinion. Are there any shoutouts you'd like to make? Realizm: Yeah man, I'd like to give a shoutout to iHydra, Ripple, Sh1eld, Angel, Premortal, Chief., and Prada's internet cause it's horrible
Justin Timberlake: Haha. Are you guys a group of gamers? Realizm: Yes and no haha. I play video games with Prada and Chief. a lot but the rest are mostly just good friends and people I could think of right now lol
Justin Timberlake: Oh. How were you originally introduced to HF? Realizm: It was 3 years ago and I think it was for the Minecraft community haha
Justin Timberlake: From what I've heard, quite a lot of people joined for gaming and Minecraft in particular. What caused you to stay? Realizm: Wow it's been so long. I think it was for the community itself. They really helped me out and I found a lot of great members like iHydra
Justin Timberlake: The community can be rough at times, but wonderful at others. Speaking of you and iHydra, you guys recently hosted a public event. Could you tell us a bit more about that? Realizm: Yeah the entire Titans family got together and hosted a Casino event where you could places bets on sports games and play poker for a virtual currency called Tittens. You could then redeem these for some great prizes! We had about 153 participants with the limited advertising abilities we had.
Justin Timberlake: That's a pretty big number of participants. So it was open to the public? What kind of rewards did you guys offer? Realizm: Yeah, we let everybody join no matter who you were. And some of the prizes included AnimeFan buyins, Phoenix buyins, a Titans Invite, upgrades, and awards
Justin Timberlake: Sounds awesome, I personally enjoyed it a lot. How did you guys come up with the idea anyway? So many groups trying to be new and creative, you guys pulled it off. Realizm: Well the original idea came from Sh1eld. He said lets do a Casino as a suggestion and we all worked to make it happen. Yeah we have many unique ideas and events planned haha
Justin Timberlake: Really? Will there be anything in the future following up on the Casino event? Realizm: There certainly will be! We are working to bring the Casino back better than ever along with another project to release. All of us in the Titan family are really excited for our releases!
Justin Timberlake: Can't wait to see what you guys have in store! So with all these group changes happening lately, what do you think about the sale of a group for OMC? Realizm: I think it's a great way to boost OMC, and if Omni can keep bringing more use for OMC and promote the coin more it will definitely go up in value. I'm glad that we are getting another group since we just had 2 groups recently deleted.
Justin Timberlake: Agreed. Is there anything you would like to see from the new owners? Realizm: I would like to see more owners that aren't in it for the money like myself. And those who can actually bring decent ideas and leadership to a group
Justin Timberlake: Hopefully we can see that happen. Is there anything else you'd like to say before we conclude this interview? Realizm: One last shoutout to the entire Titans family haha. Thank you for the interview :)
Clique: Hey man welcome to this weeks edition of the HF news! This time we're joined with a fellow writer, Justin Timberlake! How are you doing? Any shout outs before we start? Justin Timberlake: I'm doing great, how about you? And I'd like to give a shoutout to all my homies, you know who you are.
Clique: To kick this thing off - what does your alias 'Justin Timberlake' mean to you? Is he your idol? Justin Timberlake: Ever since I started listening to his music, I liked him more and more. When I joined the site, I was a huge fan and decided to change my username once I got l33t. I liked the sound of JT and decided to stick with it, but it's partly because all the good usernames are already taken.
Clique: What brought you to the forums? Justin Timberlake: A few years ago, I was a bored little kid. I wanted to play some Xbox live, but didn't have any codes. A few Google searches brought me here and as expected, I received nothing from the generous members of HF.
Clique: What's your opinion on the current groups? Do you find them to be useless or beneficial to the site? Justin Timberlake: Honestly, a lot of them are useless. But they don't have an obligation to be beneficial. The annoying thing is when groups try to act all HQ and helpful toward the community, I don't like having that enforced on members. Look at Nightfall. The only thing they claim to be is a group of gamers that have fun as a community, and that's exactly what they are. No trying to force quality upon members, because the leaders know it wouldn't work.
Clique: Do you enjoy long walks on the beach? Justin Timberlake: I do, I 143 the feel of sand on my toes.
Clique: What do you do whenever you're not online? Justin Timberlake: I'm either at school, playing basketball/video games, eating, or asleep. Rinse and repeat.
Clique: What's your thoughts on the OMC fiasco that happened? I remember you telling me that you lost quite a bit of money in that. Justin Timberlake: I'm not quite sure what actually happened. I know that there are tons of members who had money put into OMC and there was also that group auction happening. From what I see, they're trying their best to fix the problem, and it's in everyone's best interest to do so.
Clique: What's the one thing that this forum has that others don't? Justin Timberlake: We have an official site wiki. 😎
Clique: If you could change one thing for Hackforums what would it be? Justin Timberlake: I would get rid of everyone under the age of 16, along with the pretentious douchebag assholes that seem to think they know everything about everything.
Clique: Thanks for taking the time out of your day to have this interview, JT. Anything else you'd like to say before we're finished? Justin Timberlake: Thanks for interviewing me buddy, keep it classy!
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New Facuet Splashes Into the Pond (Now temporarily disabled)
A new faucet has joined the ring. Omnicoiner Tap, developed and run by Calypo, offers users a few free Omnicoins once every 24 hours. The faucet does not require user registration or email validation. Simply input your address, click a button, and you instantly get your free Omnicoins.
As of 02-11-2015 12:29 PM CST, the faucet has been temporarily disabled due to the recent hacking at AllCrypt.
Quack Pool Joins the River of Mining Pools (Now temporarily disabled) High On Quack announced this week the opening of his new pool, QuackPool. This pool features a PROP (proportional) payout with a 0.5% mining fee. This payout system varies from the other pools as it pays users in direct proportion to their work on that block alone, and doesn't penalize for sudden spikes in hashrate.
As of 02-11-2015, 10:34 CST, the pool has been temporarily disabled due to the recent hacking at AllCrypt.
Official Group Up for Auction with Omnicoin (Now Delayed)
After previously hinting of auctioning of an official HackForums group for Omnicoin in the future, Omniscient has decided to follow through with the idea and put a group up for sale. The auction was initially started at 500,000 OMC, but was later lowered to 250,000 OMC to attract more interest. To purchase the group, you must be Uber and have Omniscients approval to own a group. Omniscient may also require proof of your Omnicoin balance to verify your vote. So far, only two bids have been received.
As of 02-12-2015, 05:31 PM CST, Omniscient has announced that the auction will be suspended until further notice due to the recent hacking at AllCrypt.com
Omnicoin Under Attack, AllCrypt Users Take a Hit. 3P1C and OMC Awards Disabled
On Tuesday, February 10, AllCrypt.com user and HackForums member Raoul Dukeposted that he had seen a large dump of Omnicoin on AllCrypt and shortly after the site went down. The site came back online shorty after, but the Omnicoin market was disabled. Speculation began to arise from users until eventually a representative from AllCrypt released a statement regarding the situation:
Quote:"A quasi-anonymous user [...] made about 3 million OMC worth of deposits. A ton of it was sold off, and the user withdrew at least 2 BTC from the sales. [...] Our audit software reports we are short about 2.5 million OMC [...]"
The Omnicoin Dev Team immediately began investigating the issue. The team shutdown all mining pools in an attempt to mitigate the issue. Although they have not posted their official report yet, it is speculated that the attacker used a 51% double spend attack. It is rumored by some that there may be a roll back, but there have been no official reports. The team has chosen not to disclose any information about their current status, but they have stated that no Omnicoin transactions should be made until further notice and that they will be posting a full report of the situation once they have resolved it.
Today may be a hard time, but there are worst.
Just think of Prada trying to use his internet and
you will be cheery again. #PradaCharity2K15
Help him get his internet speed up.
-Realizm
9-31 was the K/D of Realizm on Friday the 13th Prada-
This week, pick a project you've wanted to
do, but never had time to work on. Spend
an hour a day working on it this week, and
watch how far you come.
-Crypto™
Step back and re-evaluate your priorities
for a moment, it's too easy to let yourself be
consumed by that which is undesirable. Raptor.-
space
I should be sleeping right now.
The upcoming changes are dependent on our ability to get new graphics and my time availability.
They will still be incoming soon.
Windows Priv Escalation by Single Bit Alterarion
Microsoft released a security bulletin on Tuesday which aims to fix a local privilege escalation attack that allows the attacker to bypass essentially all security measures by altering a single bit. This vulnerability (CVE-2015-0057), which only received an "important" rating despite its implicatioms, affects the Windows kernel-mode driver (WIN32K.SYS) and is caused by the improper handling of Windiws Objects in memory within the driver. According to Microsoft, attackers who manage to gain access to a machine can gain elevated privileges and read arbitrary kernel memory which would allow them unrestrictes access to the machine including the abilities to install software and packages, create administrator accounts, and install further exploits and backdoors. This security vulnerability, discovered by the security form enSilo, was revealed in a blog post by an engineer named UDI Yavo, who created a fully functioning exploit by modifying one bit in the operating system. Generally people believe that as operating systems progress, the more secure they become and the less likely they are to fall victim to such a simple attack, however, this exploit affects every operating system since Windows Vista including Windows 10 and Server versions up to 2012 R2. A detailed analysis of the exploit can be found here.
Facebook Vulnerability Allowed Anyone to Delete Pictures
Facebook is, by far, the largest social networking website in terms of users with nearly 2 billion people signed up for its services. With such a large user base, photos are uploaded at a rate of nearly 400 million per day. An arguably severe vulnerability was found by an independent security researcher by the name of Laxman Muthiyah which allowed him to use the Android Mobile Graph API to delete any photo or album on FaceBook, regardless of who owned it. Looking at the Web Requests for deleting a photo album, he noticed that you can alter a normal album deletion request and replace the Graph API Access Token with that of the Facebook for Android and it would give unrestricted access to others' photos. The vulnerability was so severe, that he was awarded $12,500 for finding the bug and it was fixed in under 2 hours of his contacting the Facebook Security Team. A rather sophomoric explanation of the attack is described in his article How I Hacked Your Facebook Photos. The issue was that the generated token was supposed to provide only limited access to the account, but the mobile version, for some inexplicable reason, had higher privileges.
The FBI 'Lost' Drone Data
In August of 2014, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had refused to publicly release its supposed plans to manage and avoid the inherent security risks that come along with surveillance by autonomous drones. Now, ironically, the FBI has released a statement saying that they cannot locate all of the drone reports. Since 2005, the FBI has used unmanned aircraft and drones to collect data and has attempted to maintain a level of secrecy from the public, and in turn, they were legally obligated to keep records of the drones' collected data. The FBI, and any other federal agencies attempting to collect data on private citizens, have been required to uphold records on what information is being collected, for what reason, the way in which it will be used, who has the privileges to access it, and others. These Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) documents are designed to be accessible by the public online to ensure that the FBI does not overstep its boundaries, but the FBI has continually withheld them.
Uber Customer Database Exposed
Uber, the app based taxi service, recently has found out that their lost and found database ended up exposing customer account information and phone numbers. The lost and found database is used for people to find items they left behind but on February 11th, the internal database for the lost and found service was accessible for 5 hours before being replaced by a 404 error according to Motherboard. The database listed various lost items but for this short period of time, 155 user's information ranging from driver names, phone numbers, internal ID numbers, and ride information was accessible to anyone. The spokesperson for Uber said, “It appears that this log of lost items was accidentally made public, and we’re sorry for this mistake. We are looking into exactly how that happened so that it does not happen again.” No further leaked information has been found.
JASBUG Windows Vulnerability
Two bugs in Microsoft’s Policy system have been making a name for themselves. MS15-014 and MS15-011, also known as JASBUG, create vulnerabilities that allow Remote Code Execution (RCE) via feeding imposter files from a server to the client. Another big issue is both bugs involve Group Policies and Group Policy Objects (GPOs) which are part of the Windows Active Directory. JASBUG was given its name by the same company who found the bugs, JAS Global Advisors. MS15-014, one of the two main bug’s parts, shows a Group Policy update which fails purposely, in turn causing your computer to become insecure specifically related to SMB Signing. MS15-011, the second of the main bug’s parts, is similar to its other because it still has to do with Group Policy. It does the same thing as MS15-014 but this one does not need to get SMB Signing to fail first. More information can be found at NakedSecurity on how to fix the problem.
Anthem – Free Protection for All Effected
Anthem, a health insurance company, is offering free identity-theft protection and credit monitoring after a cyber-attack involving Social Security Numbers, birth dates, and health information may have been compromised. Last week, a hacker breached a company database which held information up to 80 million people. Without knowing who will be effected, Anthem is taking it into their hands to try and make up for what has happened, allowing customers a peace of mind that they will still be taken cared for. Anthem expects a high demand for these free services and is hoping to minimize the downside of this breach.
Two-Step Security for iMessage and FaceTime
Apple has extended its 'two-step' security for iMessage and FaceTime. Apple first introduced 'two-step' security back in 2013 and extended it for iCloud after the photo-leak scandal in 2014. If you are an Apple user, you are encouraged to seize this opportunity for your cyber-security.
Facebook Launched ThreatExchange
Earlier this Thursday, Facebook launched a platform for companies to easily collaborate on security threats naming it ThreatExchange which is still in its beta phase. Early partners for ThreatExchange include Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter, Yahoo, Bitly and Dropbox. It is an application programming interface (API) built upon Facebook's ThreatData system. No further leaked information has been found.
Possible Live-Action Legend of Zelda Show In The Works
A TV series based on the Legend of Zelda video game series is currently in development. The development of this show is in the hands of the popular streaming service Netflix. The Legend of Zelda series briefly had its own animated television show in 1989. While in the process of finding writers for the show, Netflix has described their vision of it as "'Game of Thrones' for a family audience." If the show goes through, it will mark the first time that Nintendo tries to market a show to prime time audiences. As IDC research manager Lewis Ward says,"It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Nintendo is actively reviewing licensing opportunities that would complement core franchises like Zelda. In the right hands, it’s possible that a live action show based on the game could be a commercial and critical success.” Nintendo has stated from their end that they are, "Actively reviewing licensing" for the proposed show. The show is expected to be subject to intense scrutiny from television and video game fans alike. It hasn't been explicitly stated whether the show will aim to please older Legend of Zelda audiences or younger audiences in the way of expanding Nintendo's brand.
Titanfall 2 Will Probably Be Available on Playstation 4
A few days ago the Technology, Internet & Media Conference took place in San Francisco, with one piece of news emerging from it being that Titanfall 2 can be expected to be released on the Playstation 4. This comes from Electronic Arts CFO Blake Jorgensen saying, "Last year it was on the Xbox only; in the future, we haven’t yet announced, but we’ll probably have another Titanfall game. It will probably be a bigger footprint than just a single platform. I think that’s a huge positive for us." While Titanfall was also released on PC, it's inferred that he's speaking in terms of console gaming. News of this sort arrives in the wake of Sony's financial success in this current generation of gaming.
COD: Advanced Warfare Snubbed at DICE
Seven days ago the DICE awards took place. The DICE awards are rewarded to outstanding work in video games in a number of different categories. One title that received zero recognition at the DICE awards was Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Sledgehammer Games Studio Director Glen Schofield was not pleased, tweeting out, "Snubbed at DICE. I do have to say it hurts. Really does." You can view the full list of award-winners here. Some notable winners were Dragon Age: Inquisition, which won the Game of the Year Award; Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, which won eight different awards; and Destiny, which won Action Game of the Year and Outstanding Achievement in Online Gameplay, the award that Advanced Warfare was shooting for.
PS4 On Top for Console Sales in January
Overall video game console sales in the US have gone down over 23 percent. Xbox One and Playstation 4 sales combined have gone down 22 percent last month itself. A statement from Sony said "PlayStation 4 was the top selling console in January and remains the cumulative leader in the U.S. according to NPD data." Though sales have gone down the amount of Xbox Ones and Playstation 4's out are 60 percent higher than Playstation 3's and Xbox 360's.
Release Date for the Week of February 13, 2015:
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D - Nintendo 3DS - February 13, 2015
Resogun: Defenders - PC - February 13, 2015
Decay: The Mare -Macintosh, PC - February 13, 2015
Dead or Alive 5: Last Round Preview - Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Xbox One, Xbox 360 - February 17, 2015
The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 - PC - February 20, 2015
Gaming Video of the Week (Click to View)[video=youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLnjsnRYEFY [/video]
Now You Can Give Someone Else Access to Facebook in the Case of Your Death
Facebook is now allowing people to choose 1 person, called a Legacy Contact, to take over your Facebook account in the event of death. The said they feel by allowing people to make a legacy contact, that they are helping the mourning process of families of the deceased. It will not give someone complete control over the account however, but it will allow you to update the profile picture, header and make memorialized posts at the top of the persons feed. This is a pretty big step for Facebook, and in the end everyone on Facebook will be dead at some point. Now they are preparing for these events as they are still the number 1 social media site and plan on being around for a long time, least that seems to be the case.
100 Gbps Internet Could Come in the near Future, Experiments in Progress
We all have dreamt of having Google Fibers 1 Gbps internet connection speeds, unless of course you are living under a rock and don't have the internet. 1 Gbps is a reality in some cities, but wouldn't 100 Gbps be even more of a fantasy? Well this fantasy could become a reality using the magic that wizards have been using on fiber connections at Verizon for years. By magic, I mean light rays of course. The University of Oxford is experimenting with light beams that can transfer insane amounts of data really quickly. We've known of the concept for years, but the implementation would be tedious and expensive. So far they have been able to transfer 244 Gbps in their tests! Hopefully this technology comes out and becomes the standard in the next decade or so, at the very least in data centers.
[img]http://spectrum.ieee.org/img/9fff8e91-7c30-449c-820a-efd7873e6c59-1423773926133.jpg[/img] Photo Credits: University of Oxford
Apple Tries to Get into the Auto Industry with Electric Cars
Apple has decided that the future of technology is in cars and has started research and development on an Apple car. The car will be fully electric and be able to connect to Apple products seamlessly as one would expect. Not much else is known about their plans, except they have hired a large team to develop this new product. Will it be a success, or a failure? Only time will tell. Hopefully if they make electric cars, they can enter into the self driving industry of autos.
Every week - assuming we get enough submissions - the HF News will feature the best submitted battlestation.
Send Sir a message by clicking here and including an imgur link of your battlestation!
50" TV as a monitor with a tower attached running 16GB RAM, 1TB HDD used for gaming/media/streaming.
The desk features a widescreen monitor attached to low spec tower for running various Linux distros on live cd ect.
next to that is mid range specced laptop running quad core 8gb ram.
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