Let’s gloss over the promised extra ads from Microsoft and the sale itself. Let’s gloss over the downtime. Let’s even gloss over the frequency of people who are on Skype appear offline but are both online and available. While we’re at it let’s gloss over when messages you or they sent appear hours later.

Skype was free, Skype was easy, it was enough to gloss over a lot.

Skype has installed crapware on one of our systems without my permission.  I’m not impressed. Skype has installed crapware called ‘EasyBits Go on many Skype users systems with or without permission, including business users. It appears that only Windows users have been affected.

It cannot be properly uninstalled. Skype have confirmed it’s not malware exactly but have not kept users informed nor provided a solution to the problem.

If you’ve been affected you can get rid of it following these steps.

I am unsure why Skype would do something this foolish.   As for EasyBits go I think it’s quite clear why they took part in this. As they said, “Since the update, game sessions have jumped from 850,000 top daily game sessions to over 7 million game sessions globally yesterday.” Well, isn’t that peachy?

Now anyone, please, is there a better alternative to Skype than Google phone?

Hacking to some real experts at it means a good thing of creativity, but to most people hacking is a malicious security breech.

The website for Deus Ex: Human Revolution from developer Eidos has been compromised and all details stolen. For a while some epeen (ego) was on display which is reproduced below:

“Owned by Chippy1337”. I shudder at the leetspeak I really do, even if it is a front. It would appear Anonymous is not that united and I have seen this kind of politics played out before.

What hackers have done with all this activity is expose just how weak some corporations security defences are. Millions trust these companies with details and it would appear many companies are not worthy of that trust.

It looks like the long PlayStation Network (PSN) outage is starting to affect retail. Naturally sales of point cards are down, this is to be expected. But the shift seems to be deeper. Cancelling PlayStation 3 (PS3) game preorders and trading in PS3 consoles for Xbox 360s or nothing.

Amazing. Who would have thought hackers would end up supporting Microsoft?

Looks like the First Person Shooter (FPS) crowd who like to play online are leading the move to dump their PS3 consoles for the XBox which makes sense.

Security is never guaranteed but that doesn’t mean there’s no difference between security. Two ongoing problems in security are the system weaknesses and password failure. System weaknesses are ongoing and why you are encouraged to keep your software up to date especially if it’s exposed. System weaknesses are always being fixed as they are discovered.

Passwords are a more static problem. We are encouraged to use strong passwords with numbers, letters and characters as well as upper and lower case. Avoid the more obvious words and things like birthdays. Use a separate password for each account. Keep them long and renew them from time to time.

There are two major problems with passwords which means I see a day where they are inadequate to security. One is that there are so many. So very many that people are slowed down retrieving or remembering them. Many people use some form of password store or write them down somewhere which is a security issue in itself. The other problem is that brute force style attacks are getting stronger and may one day overwhelm us with needing 128 bit passwords which really enters the realm of silly.

So what security will replace passwords?

Thanks to: RPS and GamesonNet

You know, I would just love to own a PlayStation 3 to review those games but at times like this I am glad I do not own one.

The PlayStation Network (PSN) has now been down now for.. oh.. a few more weeks now.  The messages on its return are garbled by rumours but realistically I think another week at least.

Sigh.  Now the PlayStation blog is down.  Let’s try the EU version instead.  That one is up.  This sounds like pre-emptive blocking by Sony, since I am not in the US.

Anonymous seems to have taken some responsibility now.  Whether that is true or not is unclear but they may well be in on newer attacks.  I’m not sure it’s very wise as it makes Sony look like the poor underdog, and Anonymous the bullies.

Sony are offering Identity theft protection for those affected and there is a “welcome back” pack incuding “a month of free PlayStation Plus membership for all PSN customers, as well as an extension of subscriptions for PlayStation Plus and Music Unlimited customers to make up for time lost.”

The PlayStation Network (PSN) which provides online and multiplayer services for Playstation console users has been down for over a week which is remarkable in itself.

The problem has been due to an illegal intrusion onto their systems commonly referred to as hacking. This happened between April 17 and April 19, 2011. One might leap to the idea that Anonymous is responsible but they have denied involvement. The real perpetrators are as yet unknown but may be brought to light by the security experts.

Sony just released information on just what kind of details were compromised. These include:

• Name
• Address (city, state, zip)
• Country
• Email address
• Birthdate
• PlayStation Network/Qriocity password and login
• Handle/PSN online ID

It is also possible that the following has been compromised:

• Profile data, including purchase history and billing address (city, state, zip)
• PlayStation Network/Qriocity password security answers
• Credit card details

It’s quite a lot of detail and if you are a victim of this I would strongly suggest you look to your own security especially if you use your PSN password elsewhere. Be aware of scams that might crop up and if you’re worried about your credit card take action on it.

This is a very long outage with potentially serious consequences for their customers so I don’t think this is going to do Sony’s image any favours. It seems Sony have done what they can to deal with it but that of course doesn’t remove what happened. They claim some services may be restored in a week, so this is going to be a long haul.

Update 28 April 2011:  Didn’t take long for a class action lawsuit to pop up.  Looks like Sony are taking advantage of the downtime to rebuilt their network for better security too.

Ok I’ve had enough.

Antivirus programs are well known to struggle with ensuring they catch as many threats as possible. Most leading antivirus products seem to achieve a good level but none of them are perfect.

A much lesser known issue are false positives where the product flags a file as a threat but is not a threat.

It has been happening again and again with Norton 360. Darkfall was the first in recent memory and a particular slap in the face as it is a moderately popular mainstream game. However, ever since researching indy games there have been a flurry of these presumably false positives.

There was the Space Chem Demo, Desktop Dungeons, the Sense of Connectedness, Ace of Spades and just now Jaques Roque, just to name a few. Either the installer gets flagged as a threat, or the actual executable. Sometimes Norton 360′s Insight blocks it, sometimes it’s flagged as the WS.Reputation.1 virus. In both cases Norton dutifully locks away the file. When you drill into which virus that is, it merely means the file literally lacks reputation.

So there I am with an antivirus product which cries wolf so often that the product is essentially worthless as a proper warning system. If I overide these endless false positives one day I will let in a real threat. What’s worse is I have paid for this service. I went to Norton 360′s so called One Click (meaning around 40 clicks, a form to fill in and a refresh) support system and discovered Norton 360 doesn’t have any real solution. Their solution was to suggest I run Norton Power Eraser.

Check out this lovely list of indy software Norton’s Power Eraser the support says is bad and should go.

I really need better antivirus software that can determine threat from non-threat accurately and I lack the budget to fork out more for it.

For the indy gaming industry this could be a severe problem. Getting the word out is pretty hard as it is without having antivirus products blocking the way and scaremongering their software.

It snuck in. As far as I can determine via a portable hard drive of the boy’s. You know the species. Teenager.

A trojan. No not the prophylactic. The nasty little computer program which does nasty little things.

Including keylogging.