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Sony Unveils Slew of New PlayStation Titles
Sony on Monday announced its new game lineup for the year at the Electronic Entertainment Expo at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
"We have just concluded the PlayStation E3 Press Conference for 2016 and if ever there was a year dedicated to thrilling entertainment experiences, this is it," noted Shawn Layden, president of Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Sony announced new titles not only for PlayStation 4, but also for its virtual reality brother, the PS4 VR, which will be available in North America in October.
New games for the PS4 include Days Gone from the SIE Bend Studio, the newSpider-Man from Insomniac Games, God of War from SIE Santa Monica Studio,Death Stranding from Kojima Productions and Resident Evil 7 Biohazard from Capcom.
Other new offerings from SIE Worldwide Studios include Horizon Zero Dawn,Detroit: Become Human and The Last Guardian.
The announcement that God of War is in the pipeline is welcome news to PS4 fans, noted Lewis Ward, research director for gaming at IDC.
"People have been looking forward to God of War on the PS4," he told TechNewsWorld. "That's a tentpole title that Sony can get a lot of mileage out of."
An old favorite, Crash Bandicoot, is coming to the PS4 in three remastered games -- Crash 1, Crash 2 and Warped. Also on the horizon is Infinite Warfare, the latest in the Call of Duty franchise.
Strong VR Content Important
The company announced a trio of games for its VR box: Farpoint from Impulse Gear, Star Wars Battlefront: X-Wing VR Mission from Electronic Arts andBatman: Arkham VR from RockSteady and Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment.
"We have expected for a while that Sony will come forward with more VR titles as they approach the start of device sales in October this year," said Brian Blau, a research director at Gartner.
"The latest round of announcements had some titles from popular game franchises, and overall they will have a small but solid group of VR launch titles, " he told TechNewsWorld.
A strong lineup of VR games will be important to the success of the PS4 VR, IDC's Ward noted. "There is still some question about how strong demand will be. It depends, partly, on the strength of the final games lineup."
Catching the VR Wave
While there are already VR products in the market, Sony has an edge over them, according to Ward.
"Oculus Rift and HTC Vive are already commercially available so Sony is late to market in a relative sense, but at (US)$400, Sony's peripheral is more affordable than their competitors," he pointed out.
"It also has a lot of retail muscle, so it can have millions of units in stores worldwide when it launches the PS4 VR in October," Ward added. "Its competitors are still struggling to get their supply chains ironed out."
Sony could benefit from a pent-up demand for VR games.
"A lot of enthusiasts are looking forward to the PS4 VR, so it should be a hit during the holiday season," noted Brett L. Sappington, director of research at Parks Associates.
Sony's VR offering also has the potential to bring some PC gamers back into the fold.
"The console market has started losing out to computer-based game play. Computer games are on the ascendance and console sales have been flagging," Sappington told TechNewsWorld.
"PC-based VR takes a real beefy computer so there's a good chance the console will take the early lead in the VR world," he said.
Sony Leads Pack
The gaming console market has been in decline in recent times, but Sony has been doing better than its major competitor Microsoft overall, Sappington said.
"Xbox has been struggling. Microsoft used to give us numbers all the time for Xbox. Over the past year, they've stopped doing that. You always know when there's trouble when they stop giving you numbers," he remarked.
Sony and Microsoft are fairly even in sales and penetration in the United States, Sony clearly outstrips Xbox worldwide, said Sappington. "Sony has done a better job of marketing ... because they're marketing their console to hard core gamers, while Microsoft has been marketing Xbox as a multimedia device as well as a console." 
Russians Hack DNC Servers to Get Goods on Trump
Two groups of Russian hackers burrowed into the Democratic National Committee's servers and spent months stealing information on Donald Trump, the Republican Party's presumptive presidential nominee, Crowdstrike reported Tuesday.
The DNC had called on the security firm for assistance after in-house IT discovered evidence suggesting a breach.
Crowdstrike identified "two sophisticated adversaries on the network," noted CTO Dmitri Alperovitch, dubbed "Cozy Bear" and "Fancy Bear."
They are "some of the best adversaries out of all the numerous nation-state, criminal and hacktivist/terrorist groups we encounter on a daily basis," he said. "Their tradecraft is superb, operational security second to none, and the extensive usage of living-off-the-land techniques enables them to easily bypass many security solutions they encounter."
The hackers used advanced methods consistent with nation-state level capabilities, including repeatedly re-entering the network to change out their implants, modifying persistent methods, moving to new C&C channels, and performing other tasks to avoid detection, according to Alperovitch.
Both groups "engage in extensive political and economic espionage for the benefit of the government of the Russian Federation and are believed to be closely linked to the Russian government's powerful and highly capable intelligence services," he said.
Bears on Board
Cozy Bear, aka "CozyDuke" and "APT 29," last year infiltrated the unclassified networks of the White House, the State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the U.S., and has targeted a variety of business and government organizations, as well as academia, throughout the world, Alperovitch said. It uses a broadly targeted spearphishing campaign that delivers various sophisticated remote access tools, or RATs, to target machines.
Fancy Bear, aka "Sofacy" and "APT 28," has been active since the mid-2000s. It has launched targeted intrusion campaigns against the aerospace, defense, energy, government and media sectors around the globe -- particularly military sites that closely mirror the Russian government's strategic interests. It may be affiliated with Russian military intelligence, Alperovitch suggested.
Fancy Bear registers domains closely resembling domains of target organizations, and establishes phishing sites on those domains that have the look and feel of its victims' Web-based email services, he noted.
"Foreign state-backed operatives continue to refine techniques used in obtaining information," said Brad Bussie, director of product management at StealthbitsTechnologies.
The user is the weak point, and "as long as users are able to put themselves at risk, breaches will continue to happen," he told TechNewsWorld.
Cozy Bear's intrusion goes back to the summer of 2015 and Fancy Bear's to April of this year, Crowdstrike's Alperovitch said. There's no indication the two colluded -- both compromised the same systems and engaged separately in the theft of identical credentials.
No financial, donor or personal information was accessed, the DNC said, but it acknowledged the intruders were able to read all email and chat traffic.
As for the hackers' purported target, "the DNC can't really have anything on Trump that isn't already somewhere on the Internet," remarked John Gunn, VP of communications at Vasco Data Security.
"It's hard to imagine that the hack would reveal anything more intriguing than what Trump's already saying almost daily," he told TechNewsWorld.
Questionable Security?
"Neither the DNC's network nor their security is likely to be state of the art, [and] there are a lot of skilled hackers around the world," Lastline blogger Craig Kensek told TechNewsWorld.
Still, the DNC can't be the only target, suggested Bobby Kuzma, systems engineer at Core Security.
"If I were running these operations, I absolutely would have targeted all the major parties," he told TechNewsWorld. "I'd be shocked if the GOP weren't targeted -- and, given the attackers' resources, compromised as well."
The hackers reportedly have been expelled from the DNC network.
Cybersecurity is not enough, argued Yong-Gon Chon, CEO of Cyber Risk Management.
Companies should adopt a cyber risk strategy that assesses everything a company does that might impinge security, he told TechNewsWorld, including how it operates, who touches the data, and which third-party vendors are allowed access.
work of year
A smart TV, sometimes referred to as connected TV or hybrid TV, is a television set or set-top box with integrated Internet and Web 2.0 features, and is an example of technological convergence between computers and television sets and set-top boxes. Besides the traditional functions of television sets and set-top boxes provided through traditional broadcasting media, these devices can also provide Internet TV, online interactive media, over-the-top content, as well as on-demand streaming media, and home networking access.[1][2][3][4] Smart TV should not to be confused with Internet TV, IPTV or with Web TV. Internet TV refers to the receiving television content over internet instead of traditional systems (terrestrial, cable and satellite) (although internet itself is received by these methods). Internet Protocol television (IPTV) is one of the emerging Internet television technology standards for use by television broadcasters. Web television is a term used for programs created by a wide variety of companies and individuals for broadcast on Internet TV. In smart TVs, the operating system is preloaded or is available through set-top box. The software applications or apps can be preloaded into the device, or updated or installed on demand via an app store or app marketplace, in a similar manner to how the apps are integrated in modern smartphones.[5][6][7][8][9]
smart tv
A smart TV, sometimes referred to as connected TV or hybrid TV, is a television set or set-top box with integrated Internet and Web 2.0 features, and is an example of technological convergence between computers and television sets and set-top boxes. Besides the traditional functions of television sets and set-top boxes provided through traditional broadcasting media, these devices can also provide Internet TV, online interactive media, over-the-top content, as well as on-demand streaming media, and home networking access.[1][2][3][4] Smart TV should not to be confused with Internet TV, IPTV or with Web TV. Internet TV refers to the receiving television content over internet instead of traditional systems (terrestrial, cable and satellite) (although internet itself is received by these methods). Internet Protocol television (IPTV) is one of the emerging Internet television technology standards for use by television broadcasters. Web television is a term used for programs created by a wide variety of companies and individuals for broadcast on Internet TV. In smart TVs, the operating system is preloaded or is available through set-top box. The software applications or apps can be preloaded into the device, or updated or installed on demand via an app store or app marketplace, in a similar manner to how the apps are integrated in modern smartphones.[5][6][7][8][9]
Hit for hit
The Samsung Galaxy S7 active gives you greater peace of mind when you’re dealing with life’s everyday fumbles. It has a 5.1 inch Super AMOLED display that lets you watch vivid, clear video. The phone’s 4,000mAh battery is the largest of any Galaxy S device, providing up to 32 hours of talk time3, and can fully charge in less than two hours4. Check out this video to see the Galaxy S7 active in action. The Samsung Galaxy S7 active has all the premium features of the Galaxy S7 series including a 12 megapixel rear facing camera with Dual Pixel technology, fingerprint sensor5, and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 processor. Additionally, the Galaxy S7 active has 32GB of internal storage with a microSD slot for up to 200GB of additional storage (sold separately).6
now hit
The Samsung Galaxy S7 active gives you greater peace of mind when you’re dealing with life’s everyday fumbles. It has a 5.1 inch Super AMOLED display that lets you watch vivid, clear video. The phone’s 4,000mAh battery is the largest of any Galaxy S device, providing up to 32 hours of talk time3, and can fully charge in less than two hours4. Check out this video to see the Galaxy S7 active in action. The Samsung Galaxy S7 active has all the premium features of the Galaxy S7 series including a 12 megapixel rear facing camera with Dual Pixel technology, fingerprint sensor5, and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 processor. Additionally, the Galaxy S7 active has 32GB of internal storage with a microSD slot for up to 200GB of additional storage (sold separately).6
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