Zombie Fortress: The Hiatus

Some people have been wondering why I stopped updating the blog. Very few have asked me directlly, which of course is connected to the rather small amount of regular readers I have. Still I want to share what happened: 

Like a small ASCII creature in the great Dwarf Fortress game, I was stricken by a mood. I think "Naphtha withdraws from society..." would've been the ingame message. The dwarf would stop all he was working on and try to gather some things to create his raison d'être, a legendary artifact. Now if you know the game there's two possible outcomes: Either the dwarf gets all he needs and starts working on that artifact or something's missing for so long that he goes insane at some point and ultimately dies one way or the other. Sadly, a digizombie return is not implemented.

The artifact is my life. Either I create a legendary return from the chasm I fell into, or I die trying. But I found all the ingredients I needed and I'm working on it. Until then I will have to suspend the DZA blog. If you want to follow my progress, visit the blog I created for it - Naphtha: Life Under Construction. It's rather personal and quite different from DZA, but if you enjoy human drama (and since Tool's Vicarious we know we all do), it might be for you.

I will see you in the future, my trusty digizombie horde.

ZomPi

Happy Pi Day!

DRM And Zombies

While it was funny enough to see Ubisoft's great new uncrackable DRM for Silent Hunter 5 getting cracked in less than 24 hours, there's more to it. Ubisoft has created a system making every gamer zombie dependant on their servers and services. Just yesterday remarkably demonstrated when a few people thought it would be more appropriate to take their fight directly to Ubisoft by attacking the servers that validate an install.

The servers couldn't withstand the massive attack, leaving thousands of gamers with legitimate Ubisoft titles unable to play. Ubisoft's servers were running with »reduced service« between 2:30pm and 9:00pm CET and were only fully restored at 1:00am today.

In a bid to downplay the situation, Ubisoft said that only people trying to login were affected. Given that you need to login in order to play the game, Ubisoft was essentially saying that only those who tried to play their games were affected. Well, that's not really good now, is it?

I rather enjoy Gabe Newell's take on this. The co-founder of Valve, developer of such fun titles like Half Life 2, Team Fortress 2 and the game-selling copy-protection platform Steam, doesn't list piracy as the biggest issue for game developers. Despite the fact that the Steam system has been repeatedly hacked, their games sell just fine and they provide excellent service over the platform. Friends lists, mod-support and good multiplayer support are combined with packet deals, special sales and ads. Quite a good concept I enjoy using myself.

He sais the misconception within the industry was that copyright infringement was conducted by those who wanted to steal material. Newell believes that it is in fact »bad service« that leads people down the illegal route. Looking at the 650 posts [growing] on publisher Ubisoft's forum complaining about the DRM issues of people who actually bought the game...yeah, your system and support are probably perceived negatively, Ubisoft.

High Quality Undead: Interactive

I have to admit, this is rather old, but since it was offline for some time its resurfacing is enough for me to write about it. I'm talking about The Outbreak, an interactive movie by studio SilkTricky, who are usually busy making high end interactive flash features / movies for big brands like Lexus and Nike [which you should check out on their homepage btw.]. For someone as much into movies as me, it's nice to see this so well filmed and edited. Definitely not one of those cheaply produced interactive movies on YouTube I've seen in the past, but high quality delivered via broad bandwidth. And - of course - it has zombies. They make everything better.

So go, take a swing and try your luck in an interactive zombie outbreak!

Advice! Old TPB Torrents

In my torrent client were some old torrents I never really got completed. Looking in the tracker info I saw a socket error with the trackers of The Pirate Bay and thought my ISP had blocked them. Outrageous!

Quickly googling for it revealed that they changed their tracker url a while back, though. So if an old TPB torrent of yours isn't working and you can see a socket error in the tracker status, add »http://tracker.openbittorrent.com/announce« to the list of trackers and you should be fine.

Tracking Down The Dead

There's a fun new research project by public rights fighters at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Panopticlick. The boffins there believe it is very likely that you can be (almost) uniquely identified by the cumulation of info in your browser. They say that the sum of installed OS, browser handle, language, plugins, local time zone, usable fonts, etc. form a profile of you that is almost as unique as a fingerprint. A few lines of Javascript can read this out. Even if your browser has a private browsing setting, that doesn't help.

Now you can just add things up. Maybe you have cookies enabled, too. Oh, that will identify you very uniquely. Maybe not, but the server could still get additional info on your rough location and ISP by looking at your IP adress, unless you use a proxy all the time.

A website can easily identify you with those information and link what you do online to your profile and you. For example Google. Just think what the big G knows about you. Their Superbowl commercial made it quite clear, ironically. Life situation, hobbies, sexual preferences, possibly illegal actions even (not depicted in the ad). It can be as detailed as you wish.

There are certain restrictions, of course. For starters, however rare your browser fingerprint may be, it is probably not unique. One in 250.000 browsers may have your info. [check your browser's uniqueness here] But they could still get a specific zombie pinned down by ISP & location. The other restriction is bigger, though. What if I update my browser? Install new plugins? New fonts? Yep, your fingerprint just changed.

With that said you'd have to take certain heuristics into consideration when trying to log someones profile. How many parameters can change in what time span? Well, fonts probably won't get deinstalled, only new ones installed. With new applications for example. A little hard, but achievable.

Now if some site had those info and your real life adress and name - like eBay or some online shop for example - it goes wild. No privacy no more, mister zombie man!

What can you do against it? Pretty much nothing. Changing your browser, plugins and so on every once in a while is not very feasible. Of course you can browse via proxies like Tor to mask your IP, but that can be rather slow and then they could log your traffic or passwords. A few ISPs don't give region handles with their DNS servers, but you have to look a bit to find one. You can deactivate Javascript and every other extension, but that would harshly hinder your internet experience. 

In the end, the digizombie of today has to take that risk. Just think about it the next time you enter something on a website.

Post-Apocalyptic War Wizard Zombies

The time I would have usually spent with writing up something nice for you peepz, I spent with a movie today. And since it fits the topic I present to you:

Wizards

This 1977 animated movie features an apocalypse brought by technology and mindless mutants [read: zombies] coming from it. What a nice fit to our topic here!

Besides the sometimes rather goofy animation and funky 70's soundtrack, this fairly unknown piece of entertainment features violence, war, swearing, partial nudity and Nazis, so I definitely wouldn't recommend it for children or the easily impressed. You have to look over some weird jumps in the storytelling and a bunch of loose ends, too. But in the end, this movie is great for its symbolism, metaphors and allegories. The theme of technology is big in this cult masterpiece and although it might seem that it is being demonized here, its moral neutrality can be seen if you watch the full movie.

Ralph Bakshi directed Wizards and wanted to call it War Wizards, but since it came out the same year as Star Wars, the title was changed after George Lucas asked him to.

So if you have an hour to spare and would like to spend it with clever adult-oriented animation. Go and see Wizards.

Infected On The Phone

 As I was already talking about phones on the other post, here another look at our mobile friends. While classics from the last century like Final Fantasy I and II make their way to the iStore, smart phone developers prepare for a leap into the other direction. Yes. Yes, that is the future.

Apparently there was a lot going on at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Microsoft kicks their old Windows Mobile out - not that a lot of people were using it - and announced their new Windows Phone 7. Wait. I thought it was new, so why already a 7 at the end? Ridiculous you say? Why yes, it is. But a good promotion because it makes you think of Windows 7, which had quite the reputation lately.

Microsoft is somehow pulling an apple move here, though. For WinPho7 [speak: WIN, FOO'!] will come with a lot of restrictions for the phones it might run on. Well, a little compatibility is better than none I'd say, but then again we already have an iPhone. Also everyone else seems to go open source.

Google's Android is on the way into the western civilisations and has been open source from the start. According to Google, phones equipped with their little robot already sell over 60,000 copies a day in the East.

Nokia has their nice and new Maemo and we thought that would stay for a while, but BEHOLD! They dropped it. And so did Intel with the Moblin platform. Why would they do that? To collaborate with one another and mix in the Linux Foundation for their new idea: MeeGo.

What sounds like a Wii game is not only a collaboration of two (or rather three) heavy-weighters, but also a lucrative deal for smart phone developers and mobile service providers. Not only will MeeGo be very easy to handle regarding hardware restrictions, but it will come with an iStore like online store, in which not only Nokia and Intel can sell their stuff, but also providers and cell phone fabricators. With the recent sell of the 10,000,000th song on Apples iTunes and the success of their iStore I can see the dollar signs in everyones digifected eyes already! Yes, digifected. I said it.

Besides the fact that Symbian is the old market master for smart phones it's not really up to date with the others you might think, but BEHOLD! ...wait..didn't I say that before? Anyways, Symbian has made their OS completely open source and a new version 3 will probably be around later this year.

And let's not forget Bada by Samsung, which is also new and open source! Sooo...who will be the big players in the future (aka next year)?

- Googles Android (open source)

- Samsungs Bada (open source)

- Nokia/Linux/Intel's MeeGo (open source)

- Nokia/Symbian's Symbian 3 (open source)

- Apples iPhone

- Microsofts Windows Phone 7

That's a lotta open source by big players! I guess you all already know that open source is good, but if you don't: It is good.

Let's see what the zombies will go for next year...

QuickNews! A Zombie Choice To Make!

If you live in Europe and run Windows with your automatic updates on, you may have already noticed this when your computer starts up:

»An Important Choice To Make: Your Web Browser!«

This does not only sound like a slogan from the next Obama campaign, but it doesn't look too official, either. And it doesn't look too professional. Maybe a virus? Malware? Is this legit? Yes, yes it is indeed.

This funky [read: fugly] new message is due to our friend, Windows update KB976002. It enables us to choose our browser if we were not smart knowledgeable enough to know that there are other choices besides Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Why would they do that? Well, let's look at the site it sends us to.

http://www.browserchoice.eu/

Well, that looks rather...awful? Anyways, in the Terms of Use we see two things. First: Yes, this site is made by Microsoft. [you can only see the imprint in countries where it is required by law, like Germany] Second: Why this page is bugging us.

»BrowserChoice.eu was designed in accordance with a competition law decision issued by the European Commission in December 2009.«

Yeah, they have been forced to.

But why does Microsoft do it this way? By making this look awful, not legit and showing no transparency on where this comes from and why it is bugging me, Microsoft has pretty much ashamed itself. Or wasn't it their fault? Did the European Commission tell them to make it ugly, so people wouldn't be brainwashed by the Microsoft CI like good digizombies? Or did they just not want to spend their costy designer's time on making this look pretty, because they have been forced to? I f that is the case - cheap move Microsoft, very unprofessional.

If you have a different default browser than IE - like I do - chances are you will never see this.

Zombies East Of Africa

It was only a question of time. Viruses, worms, trojans and malware already made the jump from computer systems to portable devices like smart phones. Now rootkits are here. Unlike the above mentioned rather unnerving elements, rootkits prove to be a serious security threat. »Security? I'm not saving important data on my iPhone!« you may say. But besides the fact that there are people that have lots of sensitive data on their mobiles, that is not the point here. Think about what your cell knows about you:

- Calls.

- SMS, maybe emails.

- Appointments.

- Names, numbers and adresses.

- It goes where you go.

- It hears what you hear.

In business conferences you have your phone with you. It has a microphone and sending capabilities. Rootkits are able to access all of your phones features including WiFi, calling, speakerphone function and GPRS. Imagine someone listening in on confidential business conferences, tracking your every step. Imagine someone turning on your camera function and speakerphone while you're at home with your life partner. You see what this could mean now, yes?

Our ongoing digizombiefication has lead us to taking our phones everywhere and giving them enough power to run dangerous apps. We created the perfect spies for everyone who wants to get to us.

Flexispy is a small firm that has already incorporated a similar technology in their spyphone products. In case you want to »catch cheating wives or cheating husbands, stop employee espionage, protect children, make automatic backups, bug meetings rooms and check babysitters« or whatever reason they give to make this seem legal. Oh, wait, bugging meeting rooms? I wonder why their office is located in the Republic of Seychelles...

So far Flexispy, the mentioned rootkits and malware spread over pirated games on P2P networks like Doomboot.A-Q and Cabir all have one thing in common so far: They have to be executed/clicked/acknowledged to be installed. So far.

The danger of civil mobile trojans is not too big so far, since they can't spread on their own. What is available to the military can only be rumored so far, but they definitely have an interest here.

Of course there are anti-virus tools for your smart phone available. F-Secure, Symantec, Kaspersky, SimWorks and others all have their fingers on this emerging market, but none of them are able to detect full-blown rootkits right now. And with MetalGearA, mobile trojans armed to disable such security apps have been out for years now, too.

Next time you are in a meeting and someone asks you to turn your cell off, don't just put it in silent mode. Shut it off. No one will be listening right now, but it is hard to say when right now ends and the future begins.

The End Is Nigh

The digitalisation of modern life takes overhand. Humans become more and more dependent on electronics and computers, slowly turning into mindless internet zombies. Boffins believe it is inevitable that soon just the loss of their beloved broadband connection will turn the shambling masses into a raging horde of panicking, bloodthirsty maniacs. And we can't stop it.

I will not try to stop you. I will not try to calm you down. I will not try to scare you.

My mission is this: providing you with cutting edge information about the comming digital apocalypse. And entertain you while I'm at it. Because if there is nothing we can do to avoid our demise, we might as well laugh.

If it is new, I will post it. If it is advanced I will post it. If it is just plain funny, I will post it.

This is my mission. I will do what is within my possibilities to achieve it.

I am Naphtha and this is my manifesto. 

Maybe you can stop me, but I will just rise again, for I am part of this undead horde.