Hasta La Gadget!

If you’ve played Assassin’s Creed 2 (or other Ubisoft games), you may have installed more stealthy infiltration than you bargained for. Some snooping by Tavis Ormandy around Ubisoft’s UPlay looks to have have discovered that the service’s browser plugin, meant to launch locally-stored games from the web, doesn’t have a filter for what websites can use it — in other words, it may well be open season for any maliciously-coded page that wants direct access to the computer. Closing the purported, accidental backdoor exploit is thankfully as easy as disabling the plugin, but it could be another knock against the internet integration from a company that doesn’t have a great reputation for online security with its copy protection system. We’ve reached out to Ubisoft to confirm the flaw and learn what the solution may be, if it’s needed. For now, we’d definitely turn that plugin off and continue the adventures of Ezio Auditore da Firenze through a desktop shortcut instead.

Update: That was fast. As caught by Geek.com, the 2.0.4 update to UPlay limits the plugin to opening UPlay itself. Unless a would-be hacker can find a way to compromise the system just before you launch into Rayman Origins, it should be safe to play.

Filed under: Gaming, Software

Ubisoft UPlay may accidentally contain web plugin exploit, Ezio would not approve (update: fixed) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Jul 2012 10:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’ve ever played the video game Portal 2, you surely remember the floating robotic orb or personality core known as Wheatley. If you’re a fan of Wheatley, you will certainly appreciate this. An unnamed tech working at NASA has etched a likeness of Wheatley with the phrase “In spaaaaaaace!” underneath the likeness on the side of a component that actually went into space.

It’s not clear what the etched component is. Whatever the component is meant to do, it blasted into space aboard the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency H-II Transfer Vehicle that launched on Friday to resupply the ISS. Valve attributes the quote “In spaaaaaaace!” to Wheatley, but apparently another character in the game, the Space Core, said that phrase.

Valve said in a blog post, “thanks to an anonymous tech at NASA, Wheatley is actually going to actual space.” It’s cool when NASA and other scientists actually have a sense of humor and do things like this.

[via CollectSpace]

I once bruised my thumbs after a night-long marathon playing Tekken 3 with my college buddies. It was torture to go back to school the next day and hurdle through a pop quiz that served up mostly essay-type questions.

Bruised fingers are probably nothing new to you if you’re a true blue gamer. But if you’re itching to play something – anything! – while your digits are out of commission, then how about a game of Pong which you can play with your eyes? Sounds unreal, but it’s not.

Dr. Aldo Faisal and his team from the Department of Computing at UK’s Imperial College took some glasses, tweaked them and rigged them with circuitry to track eye movements in 3D. And voila: wearers can now play Pong simply by donning the glasses, and looking where they want the paddle to move.

The glasses weren’t made specifically for playing retro arcade games, though, as the researchers came up with them to help people with mobility or motor control issues like MS or Parkinson’s to issue commands with their eyes. And as the video shows, it’s definitely promising.

[via Gizmodo Australia via Dvice]

If you’re a fan of space exploration and you own an Xbox 360, a cool new video game has landed just for you. NASA has announced a new video game that came from the NASA-Microsoft partnership intended to help raise awareness for the Curiosity Rover that will be landing on the surface of Mars soon. The game is free and is called Mars Rover Landing for Microsoft Xbox Kinect.

The game will only work if you have a Kinect because the motion controller is used for the video game controls. The idea is for users to use their body and gestures to guide the Curiosity Rover to a safe landing. The rover landing craft has limited fuel and the goal is to place Curiosity as close to the center of the landing zone as possible before the landing craft runs out of fuel.

The video game also ties in with the NASA 7 minutes of terror landing sequence that the Curiosity will go through as it enters the Martian atmosphere.

[via Wired]

If you’re the sort of geek who likes video games and space, NASA and has a new, free, video game available for the Xbox 360. The free game is called Mars Rover Landing for Microsoft Xbox Kinect and uses the Kinect accessory for control. The game is to promote the landing of the Curiosity rover.

It’s a tie-in with the 7 minutes of terror landing sequence that Curiosity will go through as it makes its way to the surface of the red planet. The screen shots of the video game remind me a bit of an arcade game I played growing up, but the name of the game escapes me. It was one of those standup arcade cabinets with horrible black and white graphics that has a single large lever on the front that you used to control the altitude of a lander trying to touch down on the surface of the planet.

From what I can tell of the Kinect video game, the goal is to set the Curiosity rover down as close to the center of the landing zone as possible before the tethered lander craft runs out of fuel and crashes. The graphics actually look very good and the game is rated E for everyone. You can download game right now at this link.

[via Wired]

NASA offers free Mars Rover Landing Kinect game for Xbox 360 is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
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