Enlarge / Avalanche once hosted ransomware that spoofed messages from law enforcement. Now, a team of 40 law enforcement agencies has shut it down. (credit: Symantec) A botnet that has served up phishing attacks and at least 17 different malware families to victims for much of this decade has been taken down in a coordinated effort by an international group of law enforcement agencies and security firms. Law enforcement officials seized command and control servers and took control of more than 800,000 Internet domains used by the botnet, dubbed “Avalanche,” which has been in operation in some form since at least late 2009. “The operation involves arrests and searches in five countries,” representatives of the FBI and US Department of Justice said in a joint statement issued today. “More than 50 Avalanche servers worldwide were taken offline.” The domains seized have been “sinkholed” to terminate the operation of the botnet, which is estimated to have spanned over hundreds of thousands of compromised computers around the world. The Justice Department’s Office for the Western Federal District of Pennsylvania and the FBI’s Pittsburgh office led the US portion of the takedown. “The monetary losses associated with malware attacks conducted over the Avalanche network are estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide, although exact calculations are difficult due to the high number of malware families present on the network,” the FBI and DOJ said in their joint statement. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Legal raids in five countries seize botnet servers, sinkhole 800,000+ domains

Developers with both Mozilla and Tor have published browser updates that patche a critical Firefox vulnerability being actively exploited to deanonymize people using the privacy service. “The security flaw responsible for this urgent release is already actively exploited on Windows systems,” a Tor official wrote in an advisory published Wednesday afternoon . “Even though there is currently, to the best of our knowledge, no similar exploit for OS X or Linux users available, the underlying bug affects those platforms as well. Thus we strongly recommend that all users apply the update to their Tor Browser immediately.” The Tor browser is based on the open source Firefox browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation. Mozilla officials on Tuesday released version 50.0.2 for the mainstream users of Firefox. According to the release notes , it includes a fix for the vulnerability, which is rated as critical. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Firefox and Tor release urgent update for 0-day that’s under active attack

Universal Parks & Resorts and Nintendo announced today that they will be bringing a Nintendo-themed area—filled with themed attractions, shops, and restaurants—to Universal theme parks in Orlando, Hollywood, and Osaka “over the next several years.” The announcement is light on details about things like types of rides or included game franchises but full of buzzwords like “innovative,” “immersive and interactive,” “expansive,” and “breathtakingly authentic.” Still, the announcement represents the first concrete new information on the Nintendo/Universal partnership since it was first announced last year . Early reports of the “Mario area” in Universal’s Osaka park began to leak out via the Japanese press in March, but this is the first sign that Nintendo attractions will be coming to the United States parks as well. “We are working very hard to create attractions that can be equally enjoyable to anybody, regardless of age,” Nintendo Creative Fellow Shigeru Miyamoto said in a video accompanying the announcement. “We are constantly amazed how the park developers are bringing the essence of our games to life in the real world. Together we are building it with an eye for what guests will actually experience.” Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Nintendo attractions are coming to all Universal theme parks

Enlarge (credit: Scopely ) On Tuesday, Zynga sued two of its former employees. The company claims they stole confidential information and took it to their new employer, rival social gaming startup, Scopely. Massimo Maietti and Ehud Barlach worked as higher-up employees for the San Francisco-based Zynga until they left in July and September, respectively. Scopely, which makes Dice with Buddies , Wheel of Fortune Free Play , and others, is also named as a co-defendant in the case. According to Zynga’s 28-page civil complaint , Maietti was the creative director on “one of Zynga’s most ambitious soon-to-be released games, which goes by the code name ‘Project Mars.’” Barlach, for his part, was the general manager of Hit It Rich! Slots . Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Zynga sues 2 former employees over alleged massive data heist

Enlarge / Gobble gobble, Tom Servo! (credit: MST3K.com) Need an alternative to the usual parade and sports TV-binging on Thanksgiving day? Let us at Ars suggest six hours of Mystery Science Theater 3000 , which anybody can tune into today thanks to a free YouTube stream. The six-episode stream-a-thon begins at noon Eastern / 9 a.m. Pacific on the show’s official YouTube channel, and it stands out for a few reasons. While MST3K ‘s YouTube channel has a ton of classic episodes and clips, this marathon features the six episodes voted by series fans as bests, so it should be a good source of Thanksgiving vegetation. (The first film of the marathon, Pumaman , is a good tone-setter of what to expect today.) Even better, series creator Joel Hodgson and new Satellite of Love host Jonah Ray will be on hand to introduce those fan-selected episodes and exclusive snippets of the show’s upcoming, crowdfunded  11th season. It stands to reason, then, that other members of the revived cast, including Patton Oswalt and Felicia Day, will appear in one way or another, as well. The revived series’ return date hasn’t yet been announced, but we do know that when it launches, it will arrive on Netflix  for those who didn’t crowdfund for its rebirth. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Nerd parade: MST3K takes on Thanksgiving with six-hour YouTube stream

A tree full of Squamellaria plants in Fiji. Each one has been carefully grown by ants, who live inside the plants’ fleshy interior. It’s like James and the Giant Peach, except not giant. High in the trees on the island of Fiji, ants in the species Philidris nagasau are doing something extraordinary. They’ve brought in seeds from several species of a large, lumpy fruit from a plant known as Squamellaria  and carefully planted them in the nooks and crannies of the tree bark. Once the plant takes root in the tree and begins to grow, the ants climb inside its young stalks and fertilize it. But then the real action starts. As the fruit swells, the ants move inside, carving tunnels and rooms into the fleshy interior. When the colony expands, it may include dozens of these fruits, which look like strange tumors sprouting from tree branches. Though researchers have known for a while that ant colonies can live inside fruits, a new study in Nature Plants reveals that this housing arrangement is far more complex and ancient than we knew. University of Munich biologists Guillaume Chomicki and Susanne S. Renner went to Fiji to observe the ants and found that they inhabited six different species of Squamellaria . Each of these species evolved to grow in tree bark using a specialized root system called a foot. When the plants are still young, the ants enter a small cavity in the stalk called a domatium to fertilize it. Though the researchers never directly observed how the ants did the fertilizing, they speculate that basically the ants are pooping in there. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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On Fiji, ants have learned to grow plants to house their massive colonies

Enlarge (credit: Nicholas Eckhart ) Office Depot and its sister retailer OfficeMax have stopped using a technically dubious piece of malware-scanning software after two news services caught the stores recommending costly fixes for PC infections that didn’t exist. According to an  investigation conducted by KIRO TV News , four out of six stores in Seattle and Portland, Oregon claimed that out-of-the-box PCs showed “symptoms of malware” that required as much as $180 for repairs and protection. The computers, according to the report, had never been connected to the Internet and were diagnosed as free of malware by security firm IOActive. A separate TV News team from WFXT in Boston reported on Friday that the same free scanning service OfficeMax offers similarly misdiagnosed two of three brand-new PCs as potentially infected. Officials at Office Depot, the parent company that operates both chains, said they are suspending use of software known as PC Health Check for scanning customers’ computers for malware. The officials went on to say they didn’t condone the conduct reported by the TV news organizations and have undertaken a review of the assertions. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Office Depot caught claiming out-of-box PCs showed “symptoms of malware”

Napster and Metallica, together again—and they look so happy about it, too! (credit: Sam Machkovech) Metallica’s first full album in eight years launched on Friday, and as with most modern albums, it went on sale on a variety of digital storefronts. One of those sellers was more noteworthy than the others, of course, as the album launch coincided with Metallica’s first-ever warm, hugging embrace of Napster. Earlier this week, the band and company announced that Metallica’s entire catalog would finally launch on the Napster service on Friday. The $10/month music service currently resembles all-you-can-stream subscription services like Spotify and Google Play Music, and Napster’s fee now includes every published song by Hetfield and Co., from 1983’s Kill ‘Em All to this week’s Hardwired… To Self-Destruct . Of course, the Napster of today is different than the Napster that drummer Lars Ulrich lashed out against in 1999 . What was once a totally free, peer-to-peer service for the trading of MP3s has since been shuffled from corporate handler to corporate handler. After its transformation to an iTunes-styled MP3 store, Napster was taken over by Best Buy in 2008 before being dealt to Rhapsody three years later. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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It only took 17 years: Metallica’s full catalog is now on Napster