technology TUESDAY, AUGUST 15, 2017 Russia-linked hackers target hotel guests across Europe

FRANKFURT: A cyber-spying group with suspect- Several governments and security research and managed to breach the computer of a US gov- been stolen from the US National Security Agency, ed links to Russian military intelligence was proba- firms have linked APT 28 to the GRU, Russia’s mili- ernment employee, he said. giving hackers a highly sophisticated way to move bly behind a campaign targeting hotel guests in tary intelligence directorate. Other researchers In the July attacks, FireEye found spear-phish- silently inside organizations’ networks once they eight mostly European countries last month, have tracked the same pattern of attacks, but ing emails were used to trick hotel employees to infect even a single machine. researchers at security firm FireEye said on Friday. stopped short of linking APT 28 to the Russian download an infected hotel reservation document, It was also EternalBlue that fuelled the world- The espionage group, dubbed APT 28, sought to state. Moscow vehemently denies the accusations. which then installed GAMEFISH malware run wide spread of WannaCry ransomware in May and steal password credentials from Western govern- Benjamin Read, manager of cyber espionage remotely from internet sites known to be con- the NotPetya attack against Ukraine in June, which ment and business travelers using hotel Wi-Fi net- analysis for US-based FireEye, said the technical trolled by APT 28. This foothold gave the cyber fanned out globally to hit dozens of major firms. works, in order then to infect their organizational exploits and remote chain of command used to spies control over guest Wi-Fi networks and could The 2016 hotel attacks tricked one user with a fake networks back home, FireEye said in a report. mount the attacks all clearly pointed to APT 28, help them grab passwords of targeted victims and Adobe Flash update and were likely launched by a The wave of attacks during the first week of July whose vast scope of activities his firm has detailed sniff unencrypted data being transmitted to nearby hacker on the same guest Wi-Fi network, targeted travelers who were staying in several since 2014. shared network drives in the up-market, business- FireEye said. APT 28 logged into the guest’s web- hotel chains in at least seven countries in Europe “We are moderately confident in our assess- class hotels of major cities. based Outlook email account 12 hours later, it said. and one in the Middle East, it said. These prelimi- ment,” Read told Reuters, saying this was because “We did not observe any guest credentials The government employee returned to the United nary findings are the latest to allege that Russia is the technical inquiry was still in its early days. “We being stolen. However there were multiple hotel States and the infection spread to their agency engaged in far-flung hacking activity aimed at just don’t have the smoking gun yet.” The latest chains targeted and we don’t know the full extent when their computer was reconnected to the net- governments, businesses and election campaigns, attempts were identified and thwarted in the ini- of the operation,” Read said. The July attacks took work, Read said. He declined to comment on how including Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful White tial infiltration stage. But similar methods were advantage of a recently leaked piece of malicious far the attack reached or whether it caused any House bid last year. used in the autumn of 2016 at hotels in Europe, software known as EternalBlue, believed to have damage.—Reuters HSBC, IBM to develop cognitive intelligence to digitize global trade

HSBC, the world’s leading trade finance both buyers and suppliers, leading our bank, is working with IBM to develop a cog- industry forwards, and we will reduce com- nitive intelligence solution combining opti- pliance risks through an enhanced ability cal character recognition with advanced to manage huge volumes of data.” robotics to make global trade safer and “The problem is how to capture semi- more efficient for thousands of businesses. structured documents with highly variant HSBC’s Global Trade and Receivables content through an analogue process, and Finance (GTRF) team facilitates over no-one has the perfect answer,” said Roger USD500 billion of documentary trade for Welch, Industry (Financial) Expert and customers every year, and in doing so Solution Architect for IBM Analytics ECM must manually review and process up to practice. “In our experience, no trade 100 million pages of documents, ranging finance solution has come as far or done as from invoices to packing lists and insur- much as this new solution.” ance certificates. HSBC is currently using the technology The new solution uses IBM’s advanced to analyze English-language import and analytics technology, including intelligent export bills in several markets in Asia, segmentation and text analytics, to identi- Europe, the Americas and the MENA fy, digitize and extract key data within region. The team aims to enhance the solu- these documents before feeding it into the tion so it can read a wider range of docu- bank’s transaction processing systems; ments and languages including French, boosting accuracy whilst freeing up staff Spanish and Chinese. for more value-adding activities. “We are continuously investing in tech- “The average trade transaction requires nologies that will improve the way we 65 data fields to be extracted from 15 dif- work for the benefit of our customers and ferent documents, with 40 pages to be our people,” said Natalie Blyth. “HSBC reviewed,” said Natalie Blyth, HSBC’s Global wants to be the leading bank for innova- GAME REVIEW Head of GTRF. “By digitizing this process we tion, and initiatives like this one are key to paints over its will make transactions quicker and safer for achieving our goal.” problems than fixing them

ith Sonic Mania, has done the whether or not many assets have been pulled and deadly obstacles from off-screen, whether unthinkable for a corporate player in directly from existing Sonic games. It certainly actually coming from an area not shown at the Wvideo games: They’ve given it to the looks like a Genesis game, or rather, a Sega CD time or something instantly appearing in front fans. Sega has had a nightmarish time trying to release - animations are more detailed than I of Sonic. The sound of every ring you’ve collect- rekindle the magic and majesty of its iconic mas- remember them being from the cartridge titles, ed exploding out of you when colliding with a cot since the blue hedgehog’s peak in the ‘90s. though the color palette feels like it came hazard is a singularly enraging audio cue, and After the Genesis console faded, Sega went an directly from the Genesis. it’s all the more infuriating because frequently, entire hardware generation without a “proper” This extends to the way Sonic Mania plays as it just doesn’t feel fair. flagship Sonic release on the Saturn. With the well. Sonic has a new ability, the Drop Dash, While these are primarily issues for Sonic jump to 3D in 1999’s Sonic Adventure, the series which allows him to immediately drop out of a moving at speed, slowing things down can occa- retained its flash, but something was fundamen- jump and dash upon hitting the ground, but sionally pose its own frustration. Sonic has tally broken in the translation. While some fans otherwise, you could draw a direct line between always been terrible with precise platforming. defend the Sonic oeuvre from the 3/Sonic and Knuckles and The controls and animation priority are just not onward, the series’ best days were behind it, Sonic Mania. It’s a side-scroller that is, ostensibly, up to the demands of pixel-perfect precision reaching its absolute nadir with 2006’s disas- a platformer, but it’s nothing like its contempo- (and honestly, some hazards seem to hit Sonic Natalie Blyth trous Sonic the Hedgehog. raries. Instead, Sonic and his friends collect rings beyond where it seems like they should be able). Since then, Sega has tried to reinvent the as they race through each level, looping and For whatever reason, Sonic Mania includes these requisite precise platforming bits, and despite my own sense that they are somewhat more forgiving than in its 16-bit ancestors - SpaceX to launch maybe rings you drop stay on screen longer than they used to - they’re still here, and they’re super-computer to space still not especially fun. It’s ironic that sections requiring twitch reflexes are often the worst MIAMI: SpaceX is poised to launch an communications will become increasingly parts of Sonic games, but here we are, 26 years unmanned cargo ship toward the delayed. later, and it’s still true. Somewhat bucking Sonic International Space Station yesterday, Messages from Mars to Earth would be tradition, the most inventive and fun parts of the including a super-computer that could delayed from between four minutes to 24 game lie within its boss encounters. direct astronauts on future deep-space minutes one-way, depending on the dis- missions. The liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket, tance between the planets, according to I know! I was surprised too! carrying the Dragon cargo ship, is planned the European Space Agency. “Such a long Each boss requires a different strategy, which for 12:31 pm from Cape Canaveral, Florida. communication lag would make any on- isn’t unusual, but Sonic Maniareally blows out its The weather forecast is 70 percent favor- the-ground exploration challenging and most basic gameplay structures, drawing from able for launch. potentially dangerous if astronauts are met Sonic games outside of the traditional 2D plat- The mission is the 12th official trip for with any mission critical scenarios that formers and digging deep into 16-bit canon. SpaceX, which has a $1.6 billion contract they’re not able to solve themselves,” said Some encounters aren’t platformers at all, some with NASA to supply the astronauts living in HPE senior vice president Alain Andreoli in involve battles on the move that go much fur- orbit over 20 such back-and-forth journeys. a statement. ther than even Sonic CD did, and all of them About 10 minutes after launch, the rock- The new super-computer aims to pro- have enough surprises to keep them engaging. et will attempt to make a controlled land- vide “sophisticated onboard computing These sections were routinely the parts I most ing back on solid ground at Cape resources that are capable of extended looked forward to. Canaveral, as part of SpaceX’s ongoing periods of uptime,” he added, describing Sonic Mania doesn’t bat 1.000 here either, effort to re-use rocket components after the year-long effort as “the first step in that though. There are a few bosses out of the two each take-off. If Monday’s launch is delayed direction.” Another experiment on board is series over and over, with middling success. for any reason, the next attempt would designed to help scientists study Meanwhile, various fan projects have sought to backtracking at speeds that seem too fast for dozen or so that fall prey to the same punishing even the game’s camera to keep up. predilection to cheap, unavoidable deaths, have to wait until next week, due to a Parkinson’s disease in greater detail in the create new “traditional” Sonic games via hacked- spacewalk planned for Thursday by Russian hopes of finding better treatments for this in additions to original game code, as well as That feeling of barely controlled speed is which exacerbates the game’s frustratingly old- Sonic’s original schtick, and it’s leveraged for school retry system. Like any other platformer, cosmonauts, who will deploy a series of degenerative disease. completely, faithfully recreated versions of ‘90s- satellites from the orbiting outpost. Un-impeded by gravity, protein crystals era Sonics. Sega initially shut the project down, everything it’s worth here. Levels feel much big- Sonic Mania gives you a pool of lives when you ger than they were in the Genesis games, with start a game, and you gain more through col- can grow larger in space, and scientists but in a move that surprised many, the publisher Complicated cargo hope to use this environment to help them gave one of these developers the go-ahead to many, many more paths to barrel down, even as lecting 100 rings or finding them scattered throughout levels. As long as you have more The Dragon is packed with 6,400 understand an important protein in finish a port of Sonic CD for consoles and mobile many enemies and bits of scenery hit your sense lives, you’ll resume at the last checkpoint you pounds of supplies, including a sophisticat- Parkinson’s disease, known as Leucine-rich platforms to generally positive reception. Then of nostalgia like a bucket of ice. When it’s work- dinged when you die, but if you run out, you ed super-computer made by Hewlett repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2). Until now, this pro- Sega gave these same fan developers the keys ing, this speed is exhilarating, and remarkably, have to restart the stage you’re on from the Packard Enterprise (HPE), called The tein has been difficult to study in Earth, to its mascot, a partnership between developer no other game has ever managed to capture the beginning. Spaceborne Computer. The goal is to test according to researchers at the Michael J. Christian Whitehead and studios Headcannon same lightning in a bottle that Sonic did. Sonic Mania, more than any Sega-led project This is marginally better than the original the computer for one year to see if it can Fox Foundation, which developed the and PagodaWest games. game, which had no continues officially apart operate in the harsh conditions of space, research project. Other experiments on The result is Sonic Mania, a game that feels of the last 20 years, feels exactly the way I remember the original trilogy. As I made my way from cheat codes. But it still sucks. When some about the same amount of time as it would board include a stem cell investigation for slavishly, almost fetishisticallydevoted to the through the revamped, re-imagined Green Hill of the less fun, more surprise-murder boss take for astronauts to arrive at Mars. As growing new lung tissue, and equipment old-school branch of Sonic gameplay and Zone that starts the game, it was hard not to feel encounters are set at the end of a pair of acts astronauts travel millions of miles away, for growing vegetables in space.—AFP design. As a result, Sonic Mania feels like the a little giddy - could someone have made a that can take five to six minutes each (or more, series’ Genesis-period ideas taken to logical Sonic that feels as good as I remembered the if you’re trying to find secrets), you can lose a extremes, and then some. But in its fixation on originals feeling? As it turns out, Sonic Mania is hell of a lot of progress for what feels like no making a perfect recreation of ‘90s-era Sonic, maybe too faithful. Sonic & co. are capable of reason at all. some of the series’ more egregious recurring incredible speed, it’s true, but there’s a sluggish- This is especially annoying because Sonic problems remain present - with some modern ness as they work their way toward it. It’s not just Mania, unlike the 16-bit era Sonics whose pieces quality-of-life elements nowhere to be found. stopping that takes a long time, which, hey, at it’s largely built upon, doesn’t need to pad out its Sonic Mania opens as Dr. Eggman once again least that makes sense. There’s a windup to just length with progress-sapping deaths and steals a collection of powerful gems called about everything, from movement to jumping. restarts; there’s plenty to dig through. There Chaos Emeralds, and it’s up to Sonic, constant This windup time was always something were multiple acts I had to race through more companion Tails the Fox and frenemy Knuckles that made Sonic feel sloppier than his industry than once, and somehow, I always ended up the Echidna to get them back and defeat arch-rivals, and it’s in full effect here. On its down a completely different path than I had pre- Eggman until ... well, whenever Sega rolls this own, it would be moderately irritating, but it’s viously. This is something 16-bit Sonic games whole thing out again. coupled with level design that doesn’t seem to always did, but never quite on the scale in play If you’ve played any of the Genesis Sonic have learned much about the kinds of obsta- here. And you can play as either Sonic and Tails, titles, Sonic Mania is going to look and feel cles the series used that were least suited to Sonic alone, Tails alone, or Knuckles, each of familiar. No, really. Sonic Mania looks achingly the tools available. The chief example of this is whom is able to get to areas of the game inac- familiar, to the point where I’m not clear surprise appearances and attacks from enemies cessible to the others.— www.polygon.com