by Amrinder on February 22, 2012
Online hactivist group Anonymous has the U.S. based National Security Agency (NSA) worried, with the director noting the rapid growth of the organisation.
General Keith Alexander, director of the NSA, warned that within a year or two, Anonymous could have the ability to create a “limited power outage” though a cyberattack.
While a power blackout has never been a goal stated by Anonymous, the group does have plans to “shut down” the Internet. Operation Global Blackout is set to take place on 31 March, and will likely involve a mass DDoS attack on key areas of the internet.
Power grid officials in the US have said that their systems face attacks of a regular basis, and they have dedicated a “tremendous amount of resources” to repel these attacks.
“There is a recognition that there are groups out there like Anonymous, and we are concerned, as are other sectors,” said an industry official.
Cybersecurity specialist James Lewis agrees that Anonymous is a real threat. “You want to occupy Wall Street? How about turn Wall Street off? Even for a day,” he said.
Source:http://mybroadband.co.za/news/quick-news/43913-anonymous-has-u-s-officials-worried.html
by simran on February 21, 2012
Valve, the company almost single handedly keeping PC gaming alive, are considering moving into the hardware market if innovation in the computer gaming hardware sector fails to meet their lofty ambitions.
Gabe Newell, co-founder of the company behind Half Life, Portal and the Steam games distribution platform, has expressed frustration with the lack of momentum in the PC hardware sector, which he believes is still causing too high a barrier of entry for potential gamers.
“Well, if we have to sell hardware we will,” said Newell.
“We have no reason to believe we’re any good at it, it’s more we think that we need to continue to have innovation and if the only way to get these kind of projects started is by us going and developing and selling the hardware directly then that’s what we’ll do.
“It’s definitely not the first thought that crosses our mind; we’d rather hardware people that are good at manufacturing and distributing hardware do that.
“We think it’s important enough that if that’s what we end up having to do then that’s what we end up having to do.”
Could Valve hold their own as both a software developer and hardware manufacturer? They’ve certainly got the games with Team Fortress, Half Life and Portal, and have an excellent dialogue with their loyal community of Steam users. Such moves however could lead to game exclusives though, and no-one wants to be locked out of Valve’s future AAA games.
Still, if they put the same attention to detail into their hardware as they do their download platform and games, we’d be very exited indeed.
Source:http://www.techdigest.tv/2012/02/valve_may_enter.html
