When Space Grunts released at the start of 2016, we loved it. Tof said in their review that the highest praise they could give was that it was probably going to be a permanent fixture on their phone. While Tof no longer writes for us, I like to think Space Grunts is still being played every so often.

It’s hard then not to be excited by the prospect of Space Grunts 2, the sequel Orangepixel has been working on for the past few years. It’s been in Steam Early Access since September (Pascal Bestebroer has always been vocal about Steam being better for Indies versus mobile), but now that it’s finally released into 1.0, it’s also come to iOS! With any luck, an Android version will turn up at some point too.

Space Grunts 2 is still the turn-based sci-fi roguelite you remember from the first game, only this time there are cards! Every item and weapon you pick up becomes a card for your ‘deck’, and playing them to do actions is fairly quick and seamless, as highlighted by this handy gif:

As for what the rest of the game is like, you’ll have to wait until we’ve done our full review. I’ll be getting someone on this today, so our final verdict should drop early next week. In the meantime, here’s a headline feature list from the press release:

• Mixing a top down roguelike with card-battling
• Unique deck-building system (collecting items on the map)
• Daily challenges (with leaderboards)
• Unlockable modifier cards – changing the flow and rules of the game
• Random events, random modifications
• Procedurally generated levels

Space Grunts 2 is an iOS Universal App and costs $2.99.

Just in time for the end of the year, Sony has delivered its long-promised HomeKit and AirPlay 2 update to some of its popular smart TVs. Let’s go hands-on to see how to perform the update, set it up, and what you can do with the newfound features.

HomeKit and AirPlay 2 support comes to select Sony Smart TVs

We will dig much further into what these features can do, but on a high level, AirPlay 2 support allows you to cast audio and video the display without an Apple TV and HomeKit allows control of the TV through the Home app and Siri. It’s easy to see why this feature is so requested.

Setup

Updating your Sony TV to support HomeKit and AirPlay is easy. First, you need to ensure your TV is compatible. Sony originally announced support for the 2019 A9G, Z9G, X950G, and X850G but they’ve since added the 2019 A9F and Z9F models to the list. The update will be available for all those models, regardless of size.

To update the TV, users can head to Settings > Device Preferences > About > then System Software Update. The TV will search for the available update, and when found, let you install it. The update screen will also inlcude the release notes specifiying HomeKit and AirPlay 2 support.

The update will download, then when you turn the TV off, it will perform the necessary process to finalize the update. Be sure you don’t need to use the TV for a bit as the update can take up to 10 minutes.

Sony X950G settings

Post-update, the TV when next turned on will let you know your TV now supports HomeKit and AirPlay 2. You still have to head to Settings to enable the features, however. For this, venture to Settings > Device Preferences > Apple AirPlay & HomeKit.

AirPlay and HomeKit Settings on the Sony X950G smart TV

This will bring up the AirPlay settings such as turning it on/off, requiring a code, and enabling/disabling subtitles and captions. Familiar options for anyone who has used AirPlay on an Apple TV.

There is also the option to enable HomeKit. A QR code will be displayed on the screen where it can be scanned when adding an accessory from the Home app. Once scanned, it will connect and allow you to configure your TV’s HomeKit preferences. That includes its name, the room, and all of the possible inputs. Home will then suggest various scenes that may be applicable.

You must allow mobile control for HomeKit to function

As an important last step, you must confirm you want to allow mobile devices to control the TV on the television itself. Otherwise, HomeKit won’t function.

What can you do?

Once you have your television set up with AirPlay 2 and HomeKit there are several new features available to you.

AirPlay 2 is Apple’s method of casting audio and video to speakers, Apple TVs, and TVs. With this update, you can send a photo, video, or song from your iPhone right to your TV. Similarly from your Mac or iPad. You can even mirror those devices to the TV.

AirPlay 2 also enables multi-room audio, so you could send music from your iPhone to your HomePod, your AirPlay 2 speaker, and your Sony TV at the same time.

HomeKit is all about remote control and home automation. You can use Siri on your iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch, or HomePod to turn the TV on or off, change the volume, or switch inputs. You can do the same things from the Home app. Apple’s Remote in Control Center can also control your TV.

If you want to take things to the next level, that is where clever scenes and automation rules come into play. Maybe when you say “goodnight” to Siri, your door locks, the thermostat adjusts, the blinds close, lights turn off, and your TV powers down.

Your “movie time” scene may dim the lights to five percent, lower the blinds 75 percent, turn on the TV, and set the input to your Bluray player. You could also set the TV to turn on to the cable box with your good morning scene so you can get started with the local news, or set the TV to turn off when you leave so that the TV isn’t left on.

HomeKit setup and controls for the Sony smart TVs including using the Home app, Siri, and the Control Center Remote

Whatever your preference, there is much you can do with Siri, AirPlay 2, and HomeKit.

To explore more what you can and can’t do with HomeKit on TVs, check out our in-depth guide.

HomeKit and AirPlay on more than just Sony

Sony, alongside LG, Vizio, and Samsung all pledged to support AirPlay 2 natively on their TVs with all but Samsung also promising full HomeKit support. Samsung owns SmartThings and therefore doesn’t want to support a competing smart home platform.

The joint announcement with Apple came earlier in 2019 at the Consumer Electronics Show. Thus far, Samsung, LG, and Vizio have all already added support to their TVs. Sony was the last of the bunch to finalize support.

Gartner has named Microsoft Security a Leader in five Magic Quadrants. This is exciting news that we believe speaks to the breadth and depth of our security offerings. Gartner places vendors as Leaders who demonstrate balanced progress and effort in all execution and vision categories. This means that Leaders not only have the people and capabilities to deliver strong solutions today, they also understand the market and have a strategy for meeting customer needs in the future. Microsoft was identified as a Leader in the following five security areas:

• Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) solutions¹
• Access Management²
• Enterprise Information Archiving³
• Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) tools⁴
• Endpoint Protection Platforms⁵

Given this, Microsoft Security doesn’t just deliver strong security products in five crucial security areas only. We provide a comprehensive set of security solutions that are built to work together, from identity and access management to threat protection to information protection and cloud security.

Our products integrate easily and share intelligence from the trillions of signals generated daily on the Microsoft Intelligent Security Graph. And they work with non-Microsoft solutions too. You can monitor and safeguard your assets across clouds—whether you use Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Slack, Salesforce, or all the above.

By unifying security tools, you get visibility into your entire environment across on-premises and the cloud, to better protect all your users, data, devices, and applications. Today, we’ll review the five areas where Microsoft is recognized as a Leader in security.

A Leader in CASB

Our cloud security solutions provide cross-cloud protection, whether you use Amazon Web Services, Azure, Google Cloud Platform—or all three. We also help you safeguard your data in third-party apps like Salesforce and Slack.

Gartner named Microsoft a Leader in CASB based on the ability to execute and completeness of vision. Cloud App Security provides rich visibility into your shadow IT, enables you to identify and remediate cloud native attacks, and allows you to control how your data travels across all your cloud apps—whether they’re from Microsoft or third-party applications.

As Gartner says in the CASB Magic Quadrant, “platforms from leading CASB vendors were born in the cloud and designed for the cloud. They have a deeper understanding of users, devices, applications, transactions, and sensitive data than CASB functions designed to be extensions of traditional network security and SWG security technologies.”

We work closely with customer to improve our products, which is one of the reasons our customer base for Cloud App Security continues to grow.

A Leader in Access Management

Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is a universal identity and access management platform that provides the right people the right access to the right resources. It safeguards identities and simplifies access for users. Users sign in once with a single identity to access all the apps they need—whether they’re on-premises apps, Microsoft apps, or third-party cloud apps. Microsoft was recognized for high scores in market understanding and customer experience.

Gartner says, “Vendors that have developed Access Management as a service have risen in popularity. Gartner estimates that 90 percent or more of clients based in North America and approximately 65 percent in Europe and the Asia/Pacific region countries are also seeking SaaS-delivered models for new Access Management purchases. This demonstrates a preference for agility, quicker time to new features, elimination of continual software upgrades, reduction of supported infrastructure and other SaaS versus software benefits demonstrated in the market.”

A Leader in Enterprise Information Archiving

Enterprise information archiving solutions help organizations archive emails, instant messages, SMS, and social media content. Gartner recognized us as a Leader in this Magic Quadrant based on ability to execute and completeness of vision.

Gartner estimates, “By 2023, 45 percent of enterprise customers will adopt an enterprise information archiving (EIA) solution to meet new requirements driven by data privacy regulations; this is a major increase from five percent in 2019.”

A Leader in Unified Endpoint Management (UEM)

Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) solutions provide a comprehensive solution to manage mobile devices and traditional endpoints, like PCs and Macs. Microsoft’s solution, Microsoft Intune, lets you securely support company-provided devices and bring your own device policies. You can even protect company apps and data on unmanaged devices. We have seen rapid growth in Intune deployments and expect that growth to continue.

Gartner noted that, “Leaders are identified as those vendors with strong execution and vision scores with products that exemplify the suite of functions that assist organizations in managing a diverse field of mobile and traditional endpoints. Leaders provide tools that catalyze the migration of PCs from legacy CMT management tools to modern, UEM-based management.”

Intune is built to work with other Microsoft 365 security solutions, such as Cloud App Security and Azure AD to unify your security approach across all your clouds and devices. As Gartner writes, “Achieving a truly simplified, single-console approach to endpoint management promises many operational benefits.”

A Leader in Endpoint Protection Platforms

Our threat protection solutions provide tools to identify, investigate, and respond to threats across all your endpoints. Gartner named Microsoft a Leader for Endpoint Protection Platforms, recognizing our products and our strengths and ability to execute and completeness of vision. Azure Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) detects and investigates advanced attacks on-premises and in the cloud. Windows Defender Antivirus protects PCs against software threats like viruses, malware, and spyware across email, apps, the cloud, and the web.

Gartner says, “A Leader in this category will have broad capabilities in advanced malware protection, and proven management capabilities for large-enterprise accounts.”

Learn more

Microsoft is committed to helping our customers digitally transform while providing the security solutions that enable them to focus on what they do best. Learn more about our comprehensive security solutions across identity and access management, cloud security, information protection, threat protection, and universal endpoint management by visiting our website.

¹Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Cloud Access Security Brokers,” by Steve Riley, Craig Lawson, October 2019

²Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Access Management,” by Michael Kelley, Abhyuday Data, Henrique, Teixeira, August 2019

³Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Information Archiving,” by Julian Tirsu, Michael Hoech, November 2019

⁴Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Unified Endpoint Management Tools,” by Chris Silva, Manjunath Bhat, Rich Doheny, Rob Smith, August 2019

⁵Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms,” by Peter Firstbrook, Dionisio Zumerle, Prateek Bhajanka, Lawrence Pingree, Paul Webber, August 2019

These graphics were published by Gartner, Inc. as part of larger research documents and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner documents are available upon request from Microsoft. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product, or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

If you’ve worked with instances in Amazon Web Services (AWS) for a long time, you may run into this common issue. It’s not technical, but more to do with the human nature of getting too comfortable. When you launch a new instance in a region you haven’t used recently, you may end up creating a new SSH key pair. This leads to having too many keys, which can become complicated and disordered.

This article shows you a way to have your public key in all regions. A recent Fedora Magazine article includes one solution. But the solution in this article is automated even further, and in a more concise and scalable way.

Say you have a Fedora 30 or 31 desktop system where your key is stored, and Ansible is installed as well. These two things together provide the solution to this problem and many more.

With Ansible’s ec2_key module, you can create a simple playbook that will maintain your SSH key pair in all regions. If you need to add or remove keys, it’s as simple as adding and removing lines from a file.

Setting up and running the playbook

To use the playbook, first install necessary dependencies for the ec2_key module:

$ sudo dnf install python3-boto python3-boto3

The playbook is simple: you need only to change your key and its name as in the example below. After that, run the playbook and it iterates over all the public AWS regions listed. The example also includes the restricted regions in case you have access. To include them, uncomment each line as needed, save the file, and then run the playbook again.

---

- name: Maintain an ssh key pair in ec2 hosts: localhost connection: local gather_facts: no vars: ansible_python_interpreter: python tasks: - name: Make available your ssh public key in ec2 for new instances ec2_key: name: "YOUR KEY NAME GOES HERE" key_material: 'YOUR KEY GOES HERE' state: present region: "{{ item }}" with_items: - us-east-2 #US East (Ohio) - us-east-1 #US East (N. Virginia) - us-west-1 #US West (N. California) - us-west-2 #US West (Oregon) - ap-east-1 #Asia Pacific (Hong Kong) - ap-south-1 #Asia Pacific (Mumbai) - ap-northeast-2 #Asia Pacific (Seoul) - ap-southeast-1 #Asia Pacific (Singapore) - ap-southeast-2 #Asia Pacific (Sydney) - ap-northeast-1 #Asia Pacific (Tokyo) - ca-central-1 #Canada (Central) - eu-central-1 #EU (Frankfurt) - eu-west-1 #EU (Ireland) - eu-west-2 #EU (London) - eu-west-3 #EU (Paris) - eu-north-1 #EU (Stockholm) - me-south-1 #Middle East (Bahrain) - sa-east-1 #South America (Sao Paulo) # - us-gov-east-1 #AWS GovCloud (US-East) # - us-gov-west-1 #AWS GovCloud (US-West) # - ap-northeast-3 #Asia Pacific (Osaka-Local) # - cn-north-1 #China (Beijing) # - cn-northwest-1 #China (Ningxia)

This playbook requires AWS access via API, as well. To do this, use environment variables as follows:

$ AWS_ACCESS_KEY="aws-access-key-id" AWS_SECRET_KEY="aws-secret-key-id" ansible-playbook ec2-playbook.yml

Another option is to install the aws cli tools and add the credentials as explained in a previous Fedora Magazine article. It is not recommended to insert these values in the playbook if you store it anywhere online! You can find this playbook code on GitHub.

After the playbook finishes, confirm that your key is available on the AWS console. To do that:

1. Log into your AWS console
2. Go to EC2 > Key Pairs
3. You should see your key listed. The only limitation is that you have to check region-by-region with this method.

Another way is to use a quick command in a shell to do this check for you.

First create a variable with all regions on the playbook:

AWS_REGION="us-east-1 us-west-1 us-west-2 ap-east-1 ap-south-1 ap-northeast-2 ap-southeast-1 ap-southeast-2 ap-northeast-1 ca-central-1 eu-central-1 eu-west-1 eu-west-2 eu-west-3 eu-north-1 me-south-1 sa-east-1"

Then do a for loop and you will get the result from aws API:

for each in ${AWS_REGION} ; do aws ec2 describe-key-pairs --key-name <YOUR KEY GOES HERE> ; done

Keep in mind that to do the above you need to have the aws cli installed.

You might have forgotten it even existed by now, but Contra: Rogue Corps has just been updated with new content.

Access to Hardcore Missions – super-tough stages intended for skilled players – is now available, and Konami has also thrown in a pair of new Carnage League stages, as well as other content.

However, the most exciting element of this new update for fans of the series is a recreation of the first Contra game.

History repeats itself. Now it’s Rogue Corps’ turn to blast its way across the battlefield where Bill, Lance, and other members of the first Contra engaged in a deadly struggle against the alien scourge. Take the ultimate equipment and weaponry in hand, and become a legend!

Also of note is that Konami has made the weapon cool-down period much shorter in this new update. You can watch a comparison video below to check out the difference.

Will this update convince you to purchase the game, or boot it up again if you already own it? Or maybe our rather scathing Contra: Rogue Corps review put you off for good? Let us know with a comment.

Void Spirit
* Dissimilate damage reduced from 140/220/300/380 to 120/200/280/360
* Resonant Pulse cooldown increased from 14 to 16
* Resonant Pulse mana cost increased from 90/100/110/120 to 100/110/120/130
* Level 15 Talent reduced from +150 Resonant Pulse Damage to +100 Resonant Pulse Damage

Snapfire
* Fixed Lil’ Shredder charges not being consumed when Snapfire’s passives were disabled

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from video game industry ‘watcher’ Simon Carless (GDC, Gamasutra co-runner, No More Robots advisor), rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend.

This week’s roundup includes a look at the long, long-awaited Shenmue 3, a book of poetry about Super Mario World, a great video on loneliness in games, Disco Elysium, Vader Immortal, and so much more. Hope you dig it all!

Until next time…
– Simon, curator.]

——————

Steam’s discoverability strides & Steam Labs (Simon Carless / Game Discoverability Now! / Substack – ARTICLE)
“With all the sourness about Steam and game discoverability that’s sometimes going on, I did want to note that I – personally – feel like the company is making an effort recently. This post by Valve’s Alden Kroll – published in early October – about Steamworks improvements lists a bunch of the changes, Steam Labs being one of the most notable.”

‘It’s cool now’: why Dungeons & Dragons is casting its spell again (Keith Stuart / The Guardian – ARTICLE)
“Originally released in 1974, Dungeons & Dragons is having what we now call “a moment”. The company behind the game, Wizards of the Coast, which bought the rights from original creator TSR, estimates that there are currently 40 million players worldwide, with new starters up 25% year on year, as its popularity grows and rules are translated into new languages.”

17 reasons to be thankful in games (Brendan Caldwell / RockPaperShotgun – ARTICLE)
“I do recognise the emotional benefit of reflection, which is what this questionable holiday is all about. Being thankful. There are many small things we videogamers take for granted, the stuff you don’t even think about. But tiny “quality of life” things still deserve a grateful thumbs-up. Here are 17 things to be thankful for in games.”

That Time Capcom Sued Data East Over a Street Fighter Clone (Same Name, Different Game / YouTube – VIDEO)
“Remember that time Capcom sued Data East because Fighter’s History was too similar to Street Fighter II? Let me remind you!”

Shenmue 3: a review (Andy Kelly / PC Gamer – ARTICLE)
“It’s an ideal setting for a Shenmue game, a series famous for its languid, aggressively deliberate pacing. This is a game as slow and meandering as the old man strolling through Bailu’s marketplace deciding which kind of steamed bun to have for lunch. And the village’s steadfast resistance to a changing world, to the creep of modernisation, neatly reflects Shenmue 3 itself.”

Stephen Sexton: ‘For me, death and Super Mario have always been connected’ (Stephen Sexton / Irish Times – ARTICLE)
“One Friday evening, my mother came to pick us up in her red Vauxhall Corsa with a big, mostly yellow box with a black L-shaped panel on it, and, in red, the words “Super Nintendo”. Even now I can summon from somewhere in my DNA that sheer, cardiac joy. Now that I think about it, it’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that for me, death and Super Mario have always been connected. [SIMON’S NOTE: LTTP, but this serious poetry book is legit, 100% Super Mario World-themed.]”

The NES console was discontinued in 1995. These developers are still making games for it. (Luke Winkie / Washington Post – ARTICLE)
“It’s the sort of thing you’d expect to see gathering dust on the back shelf of a vintage game store. But Micro Mages was released last year, nearly 25 years after the last NES was manufactured, thanks to a crop of game developers refusing to let these classic consoles die.”

Artificial Loneliness (Jacob Geller / YouTube – ARTICLE)
“I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths. [SIMON’S NOTE: spectaaacular video on being lonely in video games.]”

Disco Elysium offers a dark mirror to my mid-life crisis (Alec Meer / RockPaperShotgun – ARTICLE)
“In the yard below, a corpse hangs from a pine tree. I can’t stand the stench. So I venture a few bolder things. About violent protest. About communism. About workers. It scares me. I don’t know where it leads to. I don’t know what I really believe, but I want to believe in something. Maybe it will make the bough bend a little.”

Are indie games too cheap? (Alex Wiltshire / PC Gamer – ARTICLE)
“Gunpoint and Heat Signature sit squarely in the standard pricing for indie games on Steam. But if Heat Signature only gained Steamspy’s average number of sales, it would have netted Francis a loss. He spent $260,000 on its production, including paying an artist, a programmer and for music, and after Steam’s cut, Francis would have a $43,000 overdraft to show for four years’ work.”

‘Ring Fit Adventure’ Treats All Exercise the Same, and That’s a Problem (Patrick Klepek / VICE – ARTICLE)
“Running a meaningful distance requires understanding of proper breathing techniques and a certain amount of endurance, so when I started playing Ring Fit Adventure, I ramped up the difficulty, figuring it would be necessary for the game to make a dent. The problem? Ring Fit Adventure treats difficulty universally, which means every exercise is suddenly set to hard.”

The Human Side of Those Who Cheat at and Hack Games (Aimee Hart / EGM Now – ARTICLE)
“What about cheating is so appealing in the first place? Was it the faux-strength that came with dominating other players, or was it something else entirely? After all, surely it couldn’t be called an accomplishment to win over other players while having an unfair advantage. It was a conundrum that I was determined to solve.”

How developers left violent combat behind to create kinder games (Malindy Hetfield / Eurogamer – ARTICLE)
“But with the years, whether that’s due to hyper-realistic styles making the violence in games seem more gruesome than ever, or simply out of a need for more gentleness in an increasingly relentless world, the number of games that re-think combat or forego it altogether has risen. I’ve been speaking to the developers of several upcoming games to ask them why they’ve started to look for alternatives.”

Embracing the Co-Op Studio Model in Indie Games (Various / GDC / YouTube – VIDEO)
“In this 2019 GDC panel, developers Scott Benson, Ted Anderson, Steve Filby, Ian Thomas and Bethany Hockenberry discuss life as indie developers, share their experiences forming workers co-ops, and talk about the benefits of the co-op model for small and midsize studios.”

The $0 Marketing Game Guide (Victoria Tran / Medium – ARTICLE)
“Let’s talk a little about the strategies we use at Kitfox. For some context (and you can understand what resources we have/do not) — we’re a team of 9, released 5 games, developing 2, and publishing 2 more. It’s my full time job to do the community, PR, events, marketing, social, etc. Tanya, our captain, helps out with marketing and any key decisions.”

Vader Immortal is what a ‘theme park film’ actually looks like, and it’s great (Adi Robertson / The Verge – ARTICLE)
“Vader Immortal can’t make you literally feel the burn of Mustafar’s lava. On the other hand, Void experiences like Secrets of the Empire are short mini-stories built for groups. Vader Immortal is about the length of a feature film, and its narrative is the kind of bizarro mystical hero’s journey that made people fall in love with Star Wars in the first place.”

What Does A Healthy Publisher/Developer Relationship Looks Like (With Real Contract Details!) (Ryan Sumo / Gamasutra Blogs – ARTICLE)
“Publisher and developer relations have always been fraught with peril.  There is a natural imbalance that occurs when a much more experienced entity with capital deals with a financially naive developer that wants to put their art out into the wider world. Recent news has borne this out, as I have heard of another publisher mistreating or wilfully misleading a developer.”

No Players Online has a second, secret phase. Sorry you missed it. (Mikhail Klimentov / Washington Post – ARTICLE)
“No Players Online is a tough game to review for two key reasons. First, there’s nothing stopping you, the reader, from playing and beating the game right now, in the next 20 minutes. I would encourage you to do just that. Play it and make up your own mind.”

Games of the Decade: Spelunky is an endless, mechanically perfect remix (John Hicks / Eurogamer – ARTICLE)
“In hindsight, and with all apologies, Spelunky is like smoking. I got into it in part because it’s what all the cool kids were doing at the time. It was embarrassingly easy to get wrong at first, but quickly became a soothing, easily-consumed daily habit. [SIMON’S NOTE: part of a massive Games Of The Decade set of features!]”

10 lovely-looking indie games to look out for in 2020 (Colin Campbell / Polygon – ARTICLE)
“Every year, an event called Day of the Devs in San Francisco showcases some of the most promising indie games currently in development. This year, the event’s seventh, was no exception. The dozens of games on display show how indie gaming remains a source of originality and artistry.”

The Second Life That Wasn’t (Mark Hill / EGM Now – ARTICLE)
“The books are time capsules of the hopes of dozens of SL users and Linden staff interviewed for them, and looking back on them today reveals a medley of the mundane, overoptimistic, and insane. There are predictions of long term government and media presence mixed with basic etiquette tips mixed with a look at Second Life’s sex work community.”

——————

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at tinyletter.com/vgdeepcuts – we crosspost to Gamasutra later, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to [email protected]. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra & an advisor to indie publisher No More Robots, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

Cyber Monday 2019 Deals & News

• Best Cyber Monday Gaming Deals Still Available At Best Buy, Amazon, Walmart, And More
• Cyber Monday 2019 Gaming Deals Still Available
• Best Cyber Monday Gaming Deals
• Best Cyber Monday Nintendo Switch Deals 2019
• Black Friday 2019: Xbox One S All-Digital On Sale For Lowest Price Ever
• Best Luigi's Mansion 3 Cyber Monday Deal: Get The Switch Game For $48
• Cyber Monday 2019 PS4 Game Deals: Here Are The Best Deals On PS4 Games
• Amazon Cyber Monday Gaming Deals 2019: Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PSVR, And More
• Walmart Cyber Monday 2019 Deals: Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, PS4 Pro, Xbox One S, Arcade Machines

Even your most security-savvy users may have difficulty identifying honed spear phishing campaigns. Unlike traditional phishing campaigns that are blasted to a large email list in hopes that just one person will bite, advanced spear phishing campaigns are highly targeted and personal. They are so targeted, in fact, that we sometimes refer to them as “laser” phishing. And because these attacks are so focused, even tech-savvy executives and other senior managers have been duped into handing over money and sensitive files by a well-targeted email. That’s how good they are.

Even though spear phishing campaigns can be highly effective, they aren’t foolproof. If you understand how they work, you can put measures in place to reduce their power. Today, we provide an overview of how these campaigns work and steps you can take to better protect your organization and users.

Figure 1. Percentage of inbound emails associated with phishing on average increased in the past year, according to Microsoft security research (source: Microsoft Security Intelligence Report).

Step 1: Select the victims

To illustrate how clever some of these campaigns are, imagine a busy recruiter who is responsible for filling several IT positions. The IT director is under a deadline and desperate for good candidates. The recruiter posts the open roles on their social networks asking people to refer leads. A few days later they receive an email from a prospective candidate who describes the role in the email. The recruiter opens the attached resume and inadvertently infects their computer with malware. They have just been duped by a spear phisher.

How did it happen?

In a spear phishing campaign, the first thing an attacker needs to do is identify the victims. These are typically individuals who have access to the data the attacker wants. In this instance, the attackers want to infiltrate the human resources department because they want to exfiltrate employee social security numbers. To identify potential candidates they conduct extensive research, such as:

• Review corporate websites to gain insight into processes, departments, and locations.
• Use scripts to harvest email addresses.
• Follow company social media accounts to understand company roles and the relationships between different people and departments.

In our example, the attackers learned by browsing the website that the convention for emails is first.last@company.com. They browsed the website, social media, and other digital sources for human resources professionals and potential hooks. It didn’t take long to notice several job openings. Once the recruiter shared details of jobs online, would-be attackers had everything they needed.

Why it might work: In this instance it would be logical for the victim to open the attachment. One of their job responsibilities is to collect resumes from people they don’t know.

Figure 2. Research and the attack are the first steps in a longer strategy to exfiltrate sensitive data.

Step 2: Identify the credible source

Now let’s consider a new executive who receives an email late at night from their boss, the CEO. The CEO is on a trip to China meeting with a vendor, and in the email, the CEO references the city they’re in and requests that the executive immediately wire $10,000 to pay the vendor. The executive wants to impress the new boss, so they jump on the request right away.

How did it happen?

In spear phishing schemes, the attacker needs to identify a credible source whose emails the victim will open and act on. This could be someone who appears to be internal to the company, a friend, or someone from a partner organization. Research into the victim’s relationships informs this selection. In the first example, we imagined a would-be job seeker that the victim doesn’t know. However, in many spear phishing campaigns, such as with our executive, the credible source is someone the victim knows.

To execute the spear phishing campaign against the executive, the attackers uncovered the following information:

• Identified senior leaders at the company who have authority to sign off on large sums of money.
• Selected the CEO as the credible source who is most likely to ask for the money.
• Discovered details about the CEO’s upcoming trip based on social media posts.

Why it might work: Targeting executives by impersonating the CEO is increasingly common—some refer to it as whale phishing. Executives have more authority and access to information and resources than the average employee. People are inclined to respond quickly when the boss emails—especially if they say it’s urgent. This scenario takes advantage of those human power dynamics.

Figure 3. The more targeted the campaign, the bigger the potential payoff.

Step 3: Victim acts on the request

The final step in the process is for the victim to act on the request. In our first example, the human resources recruiter could have initiated a payload that would take over his computer or provide a tunnel for the attacker to access information. In our second scenario, the victim could have wired large sums of money to a fraudulent actor. If the victim does accidentally open the spear phishing email and respond to the call to action, open a malicious attachment, or visit an infected webpage, the following could happen:

• The machine could be infected with malware.
• Confidential information could be shared with an adversary.
• A fraudulent payment could be made to an adversary.

Catch more phishy emails

Attackers have improved their phishing campaigns to better target your users, but there are steps you can take to reduce the odds that employees will respond to the call to action. We recommend that you do the following:

• Educate users on how to detect phishing emails—Spear phishing emails do a great job of effectively impersonating a credible source; however, there are often small details that can give them away. Help users identify phish using training tools that simulate a real phish. Here are a few tells that are found in some phish that you can incorporate into your training:
  
  • An incorrect email address or one that resembles what you expect but is slightly off.
  • A sense of urgency coupled with a request to break company policy. For example, fast tracking payments without the usual checks and procedures.
  • Emotive language to evoke sympathy or fear. For example, the impersonated CEO might say you’re letting them down if you do not make the urgent payment.
  • Inconsistent wording or terminology. Does the business lingo align with company conventions? Does the source typically use those words?

• Encourage users to communicate potential phishing emails—It’s important that users flag phishing emails to the proper team. This can be done natively within many enterprise email systems. It can also be helpful if users talk with their peers about the phishing emails they receive. Spear phishers typically don’t send blast emails; however, they may select several people from the same department or with business relationships. Talking will alert other users to be on the lookout for phishy emails.

Figure 4. Enhanced anti-phishing capabilities are available in Microsoft Office 365.

• Deploy technology designed to block phishing emails—If users don’t receive the phishing email, they can’t act on it! Deploy technology that can help you catch phishing emails before they land in someone’s inbox. For instance, Office 365, one of the world’s largest email providers, offers a variety of protection against phishing attacks by default and through additional offerings such as Microsoft Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) anti-phishing. Importantly, Microsoft has both been advancing the anti-phishing capabilities of Office 365 (see Figure 4 above) and improving catch rates of phishing emails.

Get in touch

Reach out to Diana Kelley on LinkedIn or Twitter or Seema Kathuria on LinkedIn or Twitter and let them know what you’d like to see us cover as they talk about new security products and capabilities.

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