On Nov. 27 and 28, over 100 local India law enforcement officials from Gurgaon and Noida raided 16 call center locations identified as engaged in tech support fraud by Microsoft, resulting in 39 arrests so far. These call center operations fraudulently represented themselves as affiliated with a number of respected companies including Microsoft, Apple, Google, Dell and HP.  The New York Times reports that Senior Superintendent of Police Ajay Pal Sharma stated “the scammers had extracted money from thousands of victims, most of whom were American or Canadian.” Microsoft alone has received over 7,000 victim reports associated with these 16 locations from over 15 countries.

Anyone may receive an unwanted phone call or experience a pop-up window on your device with a “warning” that your computer has a problem requiring immediate tech support. These messages are often very convincing and use scare tactics to entice consumers into contacting a fraudulent “tech support” call center. Call center operators typically encourage the victim to provide remote access to their device for “further diagnosis” before charging the victim a fee – typically between $150 – $499 – for unnecessary tech support services. In addition to losing money, victims leave their computer vulnerable to other attacks, such as malware, during a remote access session.

This latest raid comes just six weeks after the successful raid operation by the Delhi Cyber Crime Cell of 10 call center locations resulting in the arrest of 24 individuals and the seizure of substantial evidence including call scripts, live chats, voice call recordings and customer records from tech support fraud operations. The case was also registered by the Delhi Cyber Crime Cell on the basis of a complaint by Microsoft.

Tech support fraud operations typically involve multiple entities including those engaged in marketing, payment processing and call centers. Recent law enforcement successes in India build on a solid track record of global law enforcement taking action to combat the multiple layers of tech support fraud supported by referrals from Microsoft and other industry partners. For example, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and multiple partners announced 16 separate civil and criminal enforcement actions against tech support fraudsters in May 2017 as part of “Operation Tech Trap.”  And, in June 2017, the City of London Police announced the arrest of four individuals engaged in computer software services fraud.

Our work to partner with law enforcement agencies in addressing this problem is driven by a combination of technology and action taken by our customers. In 2014, Microsoft launched an online “report a scam” portal to enable victims to share their tech support fraud experiences directly with our Digital Crimes Unit team. The reports have been a critical starting point for our international investigations and referrals. Our data analytics and innovation team has added additional tools to proactively hunt and pull data from approximately 150,000 suspicious pop-ups daily targeting millions of people and use machine learning to identify those related to tech support fraud.

In addition to making referrals to law enforcement based on this data, we are building what we learn about cybercriminals’ behavior into improved products and services for consumers. Microsoft has built-in protection in Windows 10 which includes more security features, safer authentication and ongoing updates delivered for the supported lifetime of a device. Windows Defender delivers comprehensive, real-time protection against software threats across email, cloud and the web. The SmartScreen filter, built into Windows, Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer, helps protect against malicious websites and downloads, including many of those frustrating pop-up windows. People who have experienced tech support scams should know they aren’t alone, but there are steps you can take to identify and help defend yourself against criminals looking to impersonate legitimate companies. According to our recently released 2018 global survey, three out of five consumers have experienced a tech support scam in the previous 12 months. Although this reflects movement in the right direction, and a 5-point reduction since 2016, these scams persist and successfully target people across all ages and geographies. The best thing you can do to help protect yourself from fraud is to educate yourself. If you receive a notification or call from someone claiming to be from a reputable software company, here are a few key tips to keep in mind:

• Be wary of any unsolicited phone call or pop-up message on your device.
• Microsoft will never proactively reach out to you to provide unsolicited PC or technical support. Any communication we have with you must be initiated by you.
• Do not call the phone number in a pop-up window on your device and be cautious about clicking on notifications asking you to scan your computer or download software. Many scammers try to fool you into thinking their notifications are legitimate.
• Never give control of your computer to a third party unless you can confirm that it is a legitimate representative of a computer support team with whom you are already a customer.
• If skeptical, take the person’s information down and immediately report it to your local authorities.

Tags: cybersecurity, Tech scams

Sometimes when we think about open source, we focus on the code and forget that there are other equally important ways to contribute. Nithya Ruff, Senior Director, Open Source Practice at Comcast, knows that contributions can come in many forms. “Contribution can come in the form of code or in the form of a financial support for projects. It also comes in the form of evangelizing open source; It comes in form of sharing good practices with others,” she said.

Comcast, however, does contribute code. When I sat down with Ruff at Open Source Summit to learn more, she made it clear that Comcast isn’t just a consumer; it contributes a great deal to open source. “One way we contribute is that when we consume a project and a fix or enhancement is needed, we fix it and contribute back.” The company has made roughly 150 such contributions this year alone.

Comcast also releases its own software as open source. “We have created things internally to solve our own problems, but we realized they could solve someone else’s problem, too. So, we released such internal projects as open source,” said Ruff.

Watch the video interview at The Linux Foundation

If you want to keep your Fortnite experience as free as possible, Epic has now temporarily added a gifting feature, allowing your friends to send you gifts. If you are prepared to empty your own pockets, you can also send gifts yourself.

In the latest Fortnite news update, Epic explained how this new feature would be trialled for a week alongside version 6.31. To test it out, all you have to do is head over to the Item Shop, choose an item to purchase, select “Buy As A Gift” and choose a friend to send it to. As a bonus, you can add a custom message. Then, the next time your friend logs in, they’ll receive the gift box. There’s currently a good selection of outfits and emotes on the shop you can gift. Again, this will only run for a trial period of a week.

Before you can gift, you’ll need to ensure you have multi-factor authentication enabled. In terms of the finer details, you need to be friends with someone for at least 48 hours before you can send them a gift, and you can’t send more than three gifts within a 24 hour period. All gifts purchased are not refundable. and you can only gift items that are available in the Item Shop. If you don’t want to receive gifts, you can disable the option in your account settings.

Have you been playing Fortnite on Switch recently? Will you be sending a gift to someone on your friend list? Tell us below.

This week Amazon announced their new A1 arm64 EC2 Instances powered by their arm64 based Graviton Processors and, with a minor delay, the shiny new Fedora 29 for aarch64 (arm64) is now available to run there too!

Details on getting running on AWS is in this good article on using AWS tools on Fedora article and over all using Fedora on the AWS arm64 EC2 is the same as x86_64.

So while a new architecture on AWS is very exciting it’s at the same time old and boring! You’ll get the same versions of kernel, same features like SELinux and the same versions of the toolchain stacks, like the latest gcc, golang, rust etc in Fedora 29 just like all other architectures. You’ll also get all the usual container tools like podman, buildah, skopeo and kubernetes, and orchestration tools like ansible. Basically if you’re using Fedora on AWS you should be able use it in the same way on arm64.

Getting started

The initial launch of A1 aarch64 instances are available in the following four regions: US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), Europe (Ireland). Direct links to launch the Fedora aarch64 AMIs directly are available here on the Fedora Cloud site.

Getting help

The Fedora support for aarch64 is very robust. It’s been widely used and tested across a number of platforms but of course with new users and new use cases will pick up issues that we’ve yet to encounter. So what is the best way to get help? If you’re having a crash in a particular application it should be reported in the usual way through RH Bugzilla, we have an ARMTracker tracker alias to block against to help identify Arm issues. For assistance with Arm specific queries and issues the Fedora Arm mailing list and we have the #fedora-arm IRC channel on Freenode.

Known issues

We have one known issue. The instance takes a while to get started, it can be up to 5 minutes. This is due to entropy and has been a general problem in virtual environments, across all architectures. We’re working to speed this up and it should be fixed soon. Once things are up an running though everything runs as expected.

Upcoming features

There will be Fedora 29 Atomic host coming in the next Two Week Atomic release, we unfortunately missed their release this time by a small window but it’ll be available in about 2 weeks with their next release and will appear on the site once released. We can’t let you have all the fun at once

Here is a game with a novel and interesting twist. At first glance, Farabel may appear to be a fairly standard turn-based fantasy strategy game. However, start playing, and you immediately realise that, in a Memento-style plot twist, you actually begin at the end of the story and finish at the beginning. The upshot is that Farabel commences at the climax of a long and bloody conflict between humans and orcs. Play through to the end of the thirteen scenarios and you will travel right back to the beginning of the conflict, discovering why the two races got so cross with each other in the first place.

You play as human leader Cendor, and each time that you manage to lead your army to victory, you will be pushed back a little further in time. The problem with this temporal regression is that it causes poor Cendor’s battle experience to diminish. Consequently, Cendor’s skills will actually decrease as the game progresses. This is a bit of a bummer, but manipulating time does also have its advantages. During the course of each battle, Cendor has the power to reverse time. He first chooses a unit that has already completed its actions, said unit will then rewind to its original position as of the start of the round. This allows the unit to recover from any damage or ill effects that they may have recently suffered. Better still, the unit can move, attack and use abilities for a second time. It is a powerful ability and consequently, Cendor can only call upon this power a maximum of three times during each battle.

The action is portrayed in a low-key style, the unit graphics being quite simplistic and the map rather sparse without much visual appeal. It can be difficult to differentiate between certain units and the lack of an option to zoom in close or rotate the battlefield doesn’t help matters. The interface follows a similar minimalist philosophy but actually works really well. All of the actions only take two or three taps to execute, without any sub-menus or extra options to worry about. Each round, small coloured indicators will dim when a unit has used its movement or offensive actions, which makes issuing commands a breeze. This means that after a look at the brief tutorial, even inexperienced players will be ready to jump right into the thick of the action.

The bleak landscapes do not really present many opportunities for tactical manoeuvring, but the interplay between the various troop types certainly does. Battles rarely involve more than a dozen units, so the focus is on skirmishing. The units have a nice range of abilities: mounted troops can boost their attacks by charging into the heart of the battle, whilst scouts can teleport around the outskirts, peppering enemy units with crossbow bolts. You will also always have your healer on hand to dispense any necessary first aid. Enemies are similarly well designed, having a range of different powers, ensuring that the game remains challenging. The scenarios are also nicely varied, with an assortment of different goals. One level may see you trying to flood an enemy occupied village, whilst another will see you placed underground battling hordes of goblins, whilst simultaneously trying to destroy their points of entry. Some scenarios also have powerful boss creatures to overcome.

Sometimes these levels rely a little too much upon trial and error. Hidden enemies often ambush your troops leaving them vulnerable. Often, the only option is to restart the scenario with the only consolation being that forewarned is forearmed. When planning your manoeuvres it would have been useful to have some graphical representation of enemy movement and attack zones, rather than being forced to count hexes. There is a satisfying difficulty curve to these battles, but with no mid-point save options, defeat will mean that you will have to restart the current level from scratch.

The variety in the abilities of units on both sides and the range of different scenario goals means that you constantly have to tinker with your strategy. The time manipulation mechanic requires a further layer of tactical thinking. Deciding when to use your leader’s ability to reverse a unit’s turn so that they can take a second action is a key consideration. Furthermore, having to reduce your leader’s abilities initially feels very counterintuitive, but turns out to actually be a very effective part of the game’s design. It can be really tricky to decide which of Cendor’s five abilities to reduce. The inevitable decline in your leader’s prowess means that you will inevitably have to switch from a gung-ho approach to a much more considered one.

Once you have battled your way through to the end, or rather the beginning, of the main story, there are a few other options to keep you occupied. You can earn prestige in the daily challenges, or use gold to build an army from scratch. This army can then be used to either play through a series of different battles or to survive as long as possible against a never-ending stream of enemies. It would have been the icing on the cake to have a player versus player option but there is certainly plenty of content here. The whole package represents excellent value for money.

Farabel is a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously; the bickering characters and humorous unit descriptions regularly poke fun at fantasy stereotypes. Even the rousing but clichéd music seems to be a bit of a parody. The background story is presented in short amusing sequences that do not outstay their welcome. The game itself manages to be both entertaining and challenging. The time travel mechanic could have been just a cheap gimmick but in fact, it turns out to be a clever and thought-provoking addition. Some may find Farabel’s straightforward approach too simplistic, but for anyone looking for something a little different, this is well worth considering.

Sandbox

Supers

Exotic Armor

Weapons

Exotic Weapons

General

Crucible

Modes

Ranks

Shaxx 

Gambit 

Ranks

Bounties and Quests

NOTE: Once S5 begins and Infamy is reset, you must play one Gambit match before redeeming any bounties. Players who turn in these bounties after Season of the Forge begins, but before playing a Gambit match, will not correctly receive points to their Infamy rank from these bounties.

Primeval Mechanics

Matchmaking

Clans

General

Items and Economy

General

Triumphs

Collections

PC

Controls

Text Chat 

Note: The fireteam commands can target any player by providing the player’s full BattleTag, allowing players to assemble fireteams without sending friend requests.

UI

General

Misc

Performance

General

In this GDC 2018 postmortem, Michael Cranford shares the vision that led him to the conception of The Bard’s Tale series, walking through the design and development decisions inspired by his years as a dungeon master.

Cranford discusses how the games grew from an expression of his personal love for the genre and desire to surpass the experience of tabletop gaming, explaining his vision behind the games which helped illuminate a trajectory in gaming that still remains strong.

It’s an insightful talk that’s definitely worth watching, so developers shouldn’t miss the opportunity to do so now that it’s freely available on the official GDC YouTube channel!

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent company Informa

This week we’re excited to invite all owners of Kingdom: New Lands on Xbox One to participate in the Closed Beta for Kingdom Two Crowns! There’s limited space available for this Closed Beta, so please follow the steps under HOW TO PARTICIPATE to join in now.

Kingdom is a 2D sidescrolling strategy/resource management hybrid with a minimalist feel wrapped in a beautiful, modern pixel art aesthetic. Kingdom Two Crowns introduces a new campaign mode where rulers work to build a kingdom that lasts until The Greed are defeated for good. Find new units and defense technologies, explore new environments for hidden secrets, and more!

In a new co-op experience, rulers choose between a solo experience or seek the assistance of a friend in local or online multiplayer. A challenge awaits all who seek it for first-time rulers and longtime fans. Be brave, for Two Crowns reign stronger than one!

HOW TO PARTICIPATE:

1. On your Xbox One console, sign in and launch the Xbox Insider Hub app (or install the Xbox Insider Hub app from the Store first if necessary).
2. From the main landing page, navigate to Insider content > Games > Kingdom Two Crowns.
3. Select Join.
4. Wait for the registration to complete (Pending will disappear) to be redirected to the Store and install Kingdom Two Crowns!

NOTE:

• You must be signed in with an account that owns Kingdom: New Lands on Xbox One to join the Kingdom Two Crowns Closed Beta via the Xbox Insider Hub.
• Space is limited for the Kingdom Two Crowns Closed Beta, and will be offered on a first-come first-served basis.

In the Kingdom Two Crowns Closed Beta we’re looking for feedback on:

• The difficulty levels of the game, with regards to defeating The Greed, acquiring currencies, and unlocking special items. How should we adjust these things? How can we improve on them? What would make the game more enjoyable and challenging for you?
• What did you like the most with the game? A specific feature? Ability to play with a friend? Visual style? Audio and music? Campaign structure? Please give examples to your feedback.
• What did you not like and how would like it to be improved?

Submit feedback, suggestions, and issues you encounter via Report a problem (hold down the Xbox button on the controller and select Report a problem from the power menu).

Thanks for being an Xbox Insider!

Darksiders III is Now Available on Steam!

Return to an apocalyptic Earth in Darksiders III, a hack-n-slash Action Adventure where players assume the role of FURY in her quest to hunt down and dispose of the Seven Deadly Sins. The most enigmatic of the Four Horsemen, FURY must bring balance to the forces that now ravage Earth.