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Julian LeFay, 'Father of The Elder Scrolls,' Has Died Aged 59

3 months 1 week ago
Julian LeFay, widely regarded as the "Father of The Elder Scrolls," has died at age 59 following a battle with cancer. IGN reports: It was announced last week that LeFay, now co-founder and technical producer at OnceLost Games, had stepped back from game development after a lengthy battle with cancer, in order to spend time with his family and loved ones. A statement from OnceLost Games, published today, has now confirmed LeFay's passing -- "with profound sadness and heavy hearts." Born in Denmark in 1965, LeFay began his career working on early Amiga and NES games, before becoming one of Bethesda's earliest employees in 1987. After working on a string of Elder Scrolls titles, his career next took him to Sega, and then ultimately to found OnceLost Games in 2019 to develop a new open-world RPG, Wayward Realms, that was successfully pitched on Kickstarter as a Daggerfall spiritual successor. "Julian LeFay was not just a colleague -- he was a visionary who fundamentally shaped the gaming industry as we know it today," OnceLost Games' statement reads. "Known as the 'Father of The Elder Scrolls', Julian directed the creation of legendary titles including Elder Scrolls 1 and 2: Arena, Daggerfall, and Battlespire. His pioneering work established the foundation for open-world RPGs and influenced countless developers and games that followed." Bethesda also issued a statement, writing: "Without Julian, we would not be here today. If you had the opportunity to work with Julian, you were blessed to know a one-of-a-kind force of nature, who pushed everyone to create something special. His work and spirit will live on both in our memories and in our games."

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How to host a Linux-powered local dev site in Windows

3 months 1 week ago
A working copy of your site can run under Windows Subsystem for Linux

hands on  If you're building a website that will eventually be hosted on a Linux server (as so many are), you have a couple of choices about where you do your development work. You can create a beta version of the site at your web host and upload all of the files there or you can create a local test server that sits in your home or office.…

Avram Piltch

After $380 Million Hack, Clorox Sues Its 'Service Desk' Vendor For Simply Giving Out Passwords

3 months 1 week ago
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Hacking is hard. Well, sometimes. Other times, you just call up a company's IT service desk and pretend to be an employee who needs a password reset, an Okta multifactor authentication reset, and a Microsoft multifactor authentication reset... and it's done. Without even verifying your identity. So you use that information to log in to the target network and discover a more trusted user who works in IT security. You call the IT service desk back, acting like you are now this second person, and you request the same thing: a password reset, an Okta multifactor authentication reset, and a Microsoft multifactor authentication reset. Again, the desk provides it, no identity verification needed. So you log in to the network with these new credentials and set about planting ransomware or exfiltrating data in the target network, eventually doing an estimated $380 million in damage. Easy, right? According to The Clorox Company, which makes everything from lip balm to cat litter to charcoal to bleach, this is exactly what happened to it in 2023. But Clorox says that the "debilitating" breach was not its fault. It had outsourced the "service desk" part of its IT security operations to the massive services company Cognizant -- and Clorox says that Cognizant failed to follow even the most basic agreed-upon procedures for running the service desk. In the words of a new Clorox lawsuit, Cognizant's behavior was "all a devastating lie," it "failed to show even scant care," and it was "aware that its employees were not adequately trained." "Cognizant was not duped by any elaborate ploy or sophisticated hacking techniques," says the lawsuit, using italics to indicate outrage emphasis. "The cybercriminal just called the Cognizant Service Desk, asked for credentials to access Clorox's network, and Cognizant handed the credentials right over. Cognizant is on tape handing over the keys to Clorox's corporate network to the cybercriminal -- no authentication questions asked." [...] The new lawsuit, filed in California state courts, wants Cognizant to cough up millions of dollars to cover the damage Clorox says it suffered after weeks of disruption to its factories and ordering systems. (You can read a brief timeline of the disruption here.)

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