Pretend your PC Archives

Hello, and welcome to our new series which picks out interesting things that we'd love someone to make a game about.

This isn't a chance for us to pretend we're game designers, more an opportunity to celebrate the range of subjects games can tackle and the sorts of things that seem filled with glorious gamey promise.

Boris is a chess computer from the late 1970s. God, it's a weird thing: this tidy wooden box with chess pieces and a fold-out board and a lump of computer, basically, a brown shiny brick of computer with keys and a little display. That display! Boris wouldn't just make moves. Boris would be a jerk about it too, typing out burn messages when you were up against it. Face to face with Boris a few weeks back, though, what filled me with delight wasn't just that here was a funny little chess computer I had never heard of. Here was one that had once belonged to Stanley Kubrick.

I am a proper Kubrick bore. Honestly, I am bloody awful about Kubrick. But like a lot of bores, it's because there is something about Kubrick that I feel everybody should get to experience. Over the years I have watched all the films dozens of times - I am the son of two Kubrick bores, for what it's worth - and I have also read a bunch of books on Kubrick and his films, including at least one biography, by John Baxter.

The problem with reading about Kubrick, though, is that you're often reading about someone who is reading about Kubrick. Because he kept to himself such a lot, Kubrick is terribly hard to get a handle on. I got a decent sense of the timeline from the Baxter book, and there are loads of lovely anecdotes in there, but the man himself did not quite emerge from the pages.

This is what made my encounter with Boris so special. Boris was recently part of the Stanley Kubrick exhibition at the Design Museum in London. I went up to see it a while back. Cor! The exhibition takes the form of 500 or so items from Kubrick's famously voluminous archives. You get a muddle of his early life and then a trip through many of his films, building, inevitably, to 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film so devastatingly good I absolutely refuse to get over it.

And here's the thing. After walking through this exhibition for a morning, I now feel like I have a bit of a sense of the man. And that's because Kubrick speaks directly through his things.

Example. Early on there's a bunch of stuff from his attempt to film a life of Napoleon. There are books and charts and art tests and all of that jazz. But there's also a huge box of index cards, actually a box of boxes. Look closer and you realise that Kubrick had an index card - I think I am getting this straight - for every day of Napoleon's life. When Napoleon was on form, there are multiple cards for a single day.

Who does that? Kubrick did. And for the first time I realise the probable reason that his Napoleon film never got made.

Later on, there's an image of the Overlook Hotel from The Shining. Kubrick is planning a shot of the exterior, but he doesn't leave England by this point and the exterior of the Overlook is in North America. So on the picture, Kubrick has written exactly what he wants. He's worried about the path to the hotel, the curve in the path. There's a way he wants it to be done. He breaks out the all-caps. "THERE IS NO OTHER WAY TO DO IT/REPEAT NO OTHER WAY," and, "the compositional effect of a different path might be BAD BAD BAD." When Kubrick tells you something might be BAD BAD BAD, this man who had an index card for every day of Napoleon's life, you probably took notice. But still, he has to stress it. He worries. He wants total control, but he also doesn't want to travel, so the result is anxiety, artistic fretting, directing via chopsticks.

One of the things that most stuck with me at the exhibition spoke to exactly this. It's the 1990s now, and Kubrick's planning Eyes Wide Shut. Eyes Wide Shut will be set in New York, but it will be filmed in London, according to the plan at least, so Kubrick despatches someone to photograph the entirety of a London street and tape the images together so he can see which bits he might use.

Part of Kubrick, in his thirst for total knowledge, part of him was waiting for Google to turn up. I had never realised that until I saw this image, which looks like nothing so much as a home-made Google Street View, which is, I guess, what it sort of is. Like a lot of things in the exhibition, the obsession, the desire for knowledge and control is heroic and slightly grotesque all at once.

I love reading about people. But I also love the idea of learning about them in other ways. The archive is a portrait, a self-portrait, and yet it is one that is constructed in part by the viewer, by the investigator. And like all self-portraits, there is the thrilling suggestion that it contains much the creator could not see for themselves.

The Titanium malware has been released into the wild and is already making plenty of headlines. But what’s the full story behind this backdoor malware?

New malware is released every day, but certain strains are more dangerous than others. And Titanium certainly stands out. It’s a piece of malware which is highly advanced in terms of technology and pushes the boundaries of hacking. Any organization which values its privacy and security, therefore, needs to be aware of Titanium. Hacking, after all, hits productivity hard and this is magnified when it’s an advanced hack.

So, to help protect your computer network and maintain productivity, we’re going to tell you all you need to know about the Titanium malware.

Where Did Titanium Come From?

A major hack needs a major ‘talent’ behind it and Titanium certainly satisfies this condition. The perpetrator is believed to be the hacking group known as Platinum. And, in the last few years, Platinum has gained notoriety for developing persistent threats in the Asia-Pacific area. Believed to be state-sponsored, Platinum has access to funds and technology to develop advanced hacking tools. And this is exactly what Titanium is.

Titanium spreads from PC to PC in a number of different ways:

• Vulnerable intranets that have already been exploited by malware allow Titanium to get a foothold before infecting multiple workstations
• Stealthily infecting Windows installation tasks and installing itself at the same time as legitimate software
• Using a shellcode which is activated as part of the Windows logon process to ensure it’s active from startup

What Does Titanium Do?

Titanium is advanced malware and is able to infect computers in a number of different ways. It’s a combination which marks it out as a major threat, but what does Titanium actually do? Well, once it’s unleashed, it can do the following:

• Read, send and delete any file contained within the infected PC
• Edit configuration settings on the PC
• Receive commands from a remote server

Titanium is particularly virulent due to its emphasis on stealth. The potential for mimicry within Titanium is strong as it can imitate a wide range of legitimate software. And it’s this skill for imitation which enhances Titanium’s ability to deceive and spread.

How Do You Tackle Titanium?

With its combination of multiple infection threats, ability to imitate and connection to remote servers, Titanium is a slice of malware you want to avoid. While it may be dangerous, it isn’t impossible to avoid. To keep one step ahead of Titanium make sure you practice the following:

• Only install software that comes from a legitimate source e.g. purchased products and not illegal torrents
• Make sure that network activity is continuously monitored to detect any unusual traffic
• Double check all requests for software upgrades/firmware as these could easily be compromised by Titanium
• Use a firewall at all times to help prevent unauthorized connections in and out of your network

Titanium may be very quiet at the moment – Kaspersky are yet to detect any current activity – but vigilance is recommended due to the forces behind it. By understanding the threat of Titanium you can ensure that your network is protected from yet another pressing threat.

For more ways to secure and optimize your business technology, contact your local IT professionals.

Everybody knows that clicking on EXE files can be dangerous. Some people are even aware of the potential risks of opening MS Office files, which can also contain malware. But what can go wrong if you simply unpack a WinRAR archive? Actually, quite a lot.

If you are one of the 500 million people worldwide using WinRAR, you are a perfect target for hijackers. It was recently discovered that every version of WinRAR released in the last 19 years has a critical bug that allows cybercriminals into your computer. Now more than 100 ways to exploit it have been identified — and that number keeps going up.

How the 19-year-old WinRAR bug works

The security flaw enables hijackers to create malicious RAR archives. As soon as this archive is unpacked, a malicious executable file is silently extracted into the Startup folder. On the next reboot this file will be automatically launched, thus infecting your computer with whatever payload the file contains.

To pass undetected even by the most cautious of us, the malefactors usually give this EXE file very innocent-looking names, such as GoogleUpdate.exe.

It should go without saying that malicious archives and the e-mails that contain them are designed to make the victim push the extract button. The lures vary greatly. Sometimes hackers opt for bait labeled as adult images, sometimes they compose an extremely attractive job offer, sometimes they alert you of a terrorist attack risk. In some cases, malefactors pretend to send some technical documents, or inform you about recent changes to local legislation. Some even invite you to download a pirated copy of a hit album, for example, by Ariana Grande.

One way or another, the core idea is that nobody sees much harm in unpacking the archive, so many people click without giving it a second thought.

What happens when the bug is exploited

The malware payloads can be anything: remote access tools of different kinds, enabling hijackers to capture your screen and upload or download files to or from your device, or a banking Trojan, or ransomware, or any other of the innumerable malware species out there.

The most recent example of malware spreading using the WinRAR vulnerability is JNEC.a, new ransomware that locks all of the files on an infected device. At the moment, the cybercriminals are asking for a relatively modest ransom to decrypt your data: 0.05 bitcoins (about $200).

How to protect yourself against malware spreading through WinRAR bug

• Update your WinRAR right away. Unfortunately, there’s no automatic update, so you have to do it manually. Go to the official WinRAR website, download version 5.70 or a more recent one, and install it.
• To stay on the safe side, do not open any archives you receive from unknown senders.
• Use a reliable security solution such as Kaspersky Internet Security to immunize your system against potential attack.