Massive ‘Grand Theft Auto 6’ gameplay leak confirmed by Rockstar Games
A massive leak of early gameplay footage from the highly anticipated “Graft Theft Auto VI” video game is authentic, devastated developer Rockstar Games confirmed on Monday.
The developer said it had “suffered a network intrusion” in which a hacker illegally breached its systems and “downloaded confidential information,” including “early development footage” from the unreleased game. The hacker leaked the footage, which spread widely on social media even as the company scrambled to take down the videos.
“We are extremely disappointed to have any details of our next game shared with you all in this way,” the studio said. “Our work on the next Grand Theft Auto game will continue as planned and we remain as committed as ever to delivering an experience to you, our players, that truly exceeds your expectations.”
Rockstar did not provide further details on the extent of the breach. The developer said it does not “anticipate any disruption” to service for its network of games and does not expect a “long-term effect” on its development of unreleased projects.
Shares of Rockstar Games’ parent company, Take-Two Interactive, fell more than 1% before finishing with a gain of 0.7%.
The hacker posted a file with 90 videos of unreleased gameplay footage to an online forum on Sunday morning and has threatened to “leak more data soon” – potentially including the game’s source code.
The individual said “I am looking to negotiate a deal” to prevent release of more sensitive data.
Rockstar Games employees were “stunned” by the leak, with some questioning the potential long-term implications for the game’s development, according to Bloomberg.
The hack marked a setback for what is considered one of the most lucrative and successful video game franchises in the industry.
The last installment in the “Grand Theft Auto” series has remained popular since its release in 2013 and had sold nearly 170 million copies as of August. It is the best-selling game of the last 10 years, according to data from NPD Group.
Take-Two Interactive’s stock surged earlier this year when company executives first confirmed “Grand Theft Auto VI” was in development earlier this year.
The hacker responsible for the “Grand Theft Auto VI” leak also claimed to be the person behind a sweeping breach of ride-sharing giant Uber’s internal systems last week. The claim has yet to be verified.
https://nypost.com/2022/09/19/massive-grand-theft-auto-6-gameplay-leak-confirmed-by-rockstar-games-extremely-disappointed/
https://twitter.com/RockstarGames/status/1571849091860029455?
YUGE!
notable
>Friend says his concerns are shared by large numbers of rank-and-file FBI agents across the country who believe they are being used as pawns to pursue the political agenda of the bosses in Washington, DC.
Game developer 2K hacked days after Rockstar hack and GTA6 leak
2K, a game developer owned by Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., has been hacked days after Rockstar Games Inc., another division of Take-Two, was also hacked, and footage from the upcoming “Grand Theft Auto 6” game was leaked online.
The hack of 2K, which publishes games such as “Borderlands,” “Civilization” and “Bioshock,” involved an unauthorized third party accessing the credentials of a vendor of the help desk platform used by the company. According to a warning published Tuesday by 2k, the unauthorized party sent “a communication to certain players containing a malicious link.”
Any players who have received the malicious link and who clicked on it are advised to reset user account passwords stored in their web browser and enable two-factor authentication wherever possible — while avoiding 2FA with text message verification. Players are also advised to install and run a reputable antivirus program and check their account settings to see if any forwarding rules have been added to their email accounts.
The compromise may be ongoing, with 2K saying that their support portal will “remain offline while we address this issue” and that it will let players know when support is available again.
Although 2K did not name the vendor, notably the company uses Zendesk Inc. for its support portal. It’s unknown if a Zendesk account was compromised or if the account belongs to another third-party vendor used by 2K, which also had access to the Zendesk-powered support portal.
Bleeping Computer reported Tuesday that the messages received by 2K users came from a fake 2K support representative called “Prince K.” The messages included an attached file named “2K Launcher.zip” hosted directly on 2ksupport.zendesk.com, which pretended to be a new game launcher. The zip file contained an unsigned file called “2k Launcher.exe” that included RedLine Stealer, a low-cost password stealer sold on underground forums.
“The depth of 2K Games breach is another cautionary tale of supply chain security,” David Maynor, senior director of threat intelligence at cybersecurity training company Cybrary Inc., told SiliconANGLE. “This compromise allowed the attackers to send official mail and hosting malware directly on their help desk server.”
Maynor added that the scope of the attack seemed limited only by the attackers’ imagination. “2K Games just released ‘NBA 2K23,’ a popular basketball franchise that brought extra scrutiny to the 2K Games support platform” he said.
Surja Chatterjea, head of product and alliances at enterprise cybersecurity solutions provider Skybox Security Inc., described the Redline Stealer malware as “highly sophisticated yet low-cost infostealer” that is notorious in the malware as a service economy for its widespread impact.
“Earlier in the year, there were reports of RedLine Stealer being installed on computers of unsuspecting victims via an Internet Explorer vulnerability on outdated browsers,” Chatterjea explained, adding that “companies must address vulnerability exposure risks before threat actors can exploit them.”
https://siliconangle.com/2022/09/21/game-developer-2k-hacked-days-rockstar-hack-gta6-leak/
There are 2.5 million ants for each human on Earth
09-21-2022
A team of researchers from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) has recently provided an estimate of how many ants currently live on our planet. The result is staggering: 20 quadrillion – or 20,000,000,000,000,000 – ants roam the Earth, meaning that for each human being, there are about 2.5 million ants. According to the experts, if all the ants were plucked from the ground and weighted, they would outweigh all the mammals and wild birds put together.
“I was amazed that the ants’ biomass was higher than that of wild mammals and birds combined, and that it reaches 20 percent of the human biomass. That gives you an understanding of the scale of their impact,” said study co-lead author Sabine Nooten, an insect ecologist at HKU.
“It’s unimaginable,” added study lead author Patrick Schultheiss, a researcher at the University of Würzburg in Germany. “We simply cannot imagine 20 quadrillion ants in one pile, for example. It just doesn’t work.”
Like humans, ants have spread almost all over the Earth, and although they are most abundant in tropical and subtropical regions, they can be found nearly everywhere besides the coldest parts of our planet. These insects play important roles in the proper functioning of a variety of ecosystems. For instance, they aerate the soil and drag seeds underground to sprout, they serve as food for a variety of birds, mammals, and arthropods, and they help decomposing dead wood and other types of matter.
“Some ants can certainly be very annoying, but that’s a very human-centered perspective,” Schultheiss explained. “Most ants are actually highly beneficial, even to us humans. Think about the amount of organic matter that 20 quadrillion ants transport, remove, recycle, and eat. In fact, ants are so essential for the smooth working of biological processes that they can be seen as ecosystem engineers. The late ant scientist E.O. Wilson once called them ’the little things that run the world.’”
While scientists are already seeing troubling declines in insect populations all over the world – caused by habitat destruction, climate change, and increased use of pesticides – they are not yet sure whether ants’ numbers are falling down too. “We did not yet attempt to show this temporal shift in ant abundance. That would be something that would come next,” Nooten concluded.
The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (The abundance, biomass, and distribution of ants on Earth)
https://www.earth.com/news/there-are-2-5-million-ants-for-each-human-on-earth/
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2201550119
The hot air balloon response had me kekking