Saturday, February 29, 2020
Architecture and Programming model of 8086
Architecture and Programming model of 8086 Intel 8086 is a 16 bit integer processor. It has a 16-bit Data bus and a 20-bit Address bus. Since 20-bit address lines are available that provide up to 1MB of storage. It consists of a powerful instruction set which makes it possible to carry out different operations easily.It supports 2 modes of operation, Maximum (multiple processors can be used) and Minimum (Single processor is used).Architecture of 8086 The internal architecture of 8086 is divided into 2 units, Bus Interface Unit (BIU) and Execution Unit (EU).A diagram of the architecture is shown below.Bus Interface Unit (BIU)BIU takes care of all data and address transfers on the buses for the EU like sending addresses, fetching instructions from the memory, reading data from ports, writing data into the memory ports and lastly it also generates the memory addresses. The EU and the BIU are connected by the Internal Bus.The BIU has the following functional parts: Instruction Queue- the BIU uses the concept of pipelining. This means while the current instruction is being executed the BIU gets up to 6 bytes of the next instruction (prefetching) and stores them in the instruction queue. Once execution is complete, the instruction queue is ready to provide the next instruction set which is simply read and executed. This results in increased execution speed. Instruction Pointer- It is a 16-bit register used to hold the address of the next instruction to be executed. Segment Register BIU has 4 segment buses, i.e. CS, DS, SS ES. It holds the addresses of instructions and data in memory, which are used by the processor to access memory locations. CS It stands for Code Segment. It is used for addressing a memory location in the code segment of the memory, where the executable program is stored. DS It stands for Data Segment. It consists of data used by the program and is accessed in the data segment by an offset address or the content of other register that holds the offset address. SS It stands for Stack Segment. It handles memory to store data and addresses during execution. ES It stands for Extra Segment. ES is additional data segment, which is used by the string to hold the extra destination data. Execution Unit (EU)EU gives instructions to BIU stating from where to fetch data, decode it and finally execute it. Its function is to control operations on data using the instruction decoder and ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit). The data on which the operations are performed is brought in using the BIU.The EU has the following functional parts: ALU- It handles all arithmetic and logic operations, like +, -, Ãâ", /, OR, AND NOT. Flag Register- It is a 16-bit register that behaves like a flip-flop, i.e. it changes its status according to the result stored in the accumulator. It has 9 flags and they are divided into 2 groups Conditional Flags and Control Flags. Conditional Flags It represents the result of the last arithmetic or logic instruction executed. These flags are listed below: Carry Flag- This flag is set to ââ¬Ë1ââ¬â¢ when an addition causes a carry or a subtraction causes a borrow. Auxiliary Flag- This flag is set to ââ¬Ë1ââ¬â¢ when an addition causes a carry while moving from a lower nibble to the upper nibble in BCD addition. Parity Flag- This flag is set to ââ¬Ë1ââ¬â¢ if the low order 8 bits of the result contain an even number of ââ¬Ë1ââ¬â¢s. Zero Flag- This flag is set to 1 when the result of arithmetic or logical operation is zero. Sign Flag- This flag holds the sign of the result, i.e. when the result of the operation is negative, then the sign flag is set to 1 else set to 0. Overflow Flag- This is set to ââ¬Ë1ââ¬â¢ if the result is out of range or when the system capacity has exceeded. Conditional Flags These control the operations of the EU and can also be used by the user. These flags are listed below: Trap flag It is used for single step control and allows the user to execute one instruction at a time for debugging. If it is set, then the program can be run in a single step mode. Interrupt flag It is an interrupt enable/disable flag, i.e. used to allow/prohibit the interruption of a program. It is set to 1 for interrupt enabled condition and set to 0 for interrupt disabled condition. Direction flag It is used in string operation. As the name suggests when it is set then string bytes are accessed from the higher memory address to the lower memory address and vice-a-versa. General purpose register- There are 8 general purpose registers, i.e., AH, AL, BH, BL, CH, CL, DH, and DL. These registers can be used individually to store 8-bit data and can be used in pairs to store 16-bit data. The valid register pairs are AH and AL, BH and BL, CH and CL, and DH and DL. It is referred to the AX, BX, CX, and DX respectively. Their functionalities are listed below: AX register- It is also known as accumulator register. It is used to store operands for arithmetic operations. BX register- It is used as a base register. It is used to store the starting base address of the memory area within the data segment. CX register- It is referred to as counter. It is used in loop instruction to store the loop counter. DX register- This register is used to hold I/O port address for I/O instruction. Stack Pointer Register- It is a 16-bit register which holds the address from the start of the segment to the memory location, where a word was most recently stored on the stack.
Thursday, February 13, 2020
Change Project Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words
Change Project - Essay Example Emotion orà affectà is theà methodà in humanistic psychology that recognizes feelings and theà considerationà that results to transformations in performance andà cognition. A person realizes the need to change when something happens. This is a practicalà proofà that works for individuals, healthyà familyà growthà and couples. There are several behavioral forms. Change of behaviorà is widely investigatedà andà is appliedà for parenting method. A person shouldà ceaseà the behavior and begin to work directly onà transformation. Regarding thoughtsà technique, there should beà motivationà that originates from the inside because theà secretà toà achievementà is within each andà everyone. If a person hasà positiveà faith andà devotionà to what they do,à subsequentlyà things work out in a positive way. In system technique, a person needs to beà optimisticà toà attainà what he wants. Support from family isà essentialà for a personsââ¬â¢Ã achievementà becauseà systemà change involves the whole system and not just anà individual. Culture plays a crucial role when initiating change. Working againstà predominantà customs will make attainingà transformationà harder, but working with it and identifying fundamental forces canà aidà easeà change. Reaction toà modificationà when changeà is forcedà isà constantlyà difficultà (Whitbourne, 2010).Reference Whitbourne, S. K. (2010). Beginnings: Psychological Perspectives on Four Types of Change. Retrieved October 19, 2011, from Psychology Today:
Saturday, February 1, 2020
Politic papers Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words
Politic papers - Essay Example Wars have raged in these regions for several years and the devastation brought about these wars has been tremendous. To be specific, the Iraq War had cost so much destruction of lives and properties. For the next five years, the destruction of lives and properties will most likely continue. On the other hand, the aftermath of the war could take a great toll on the economy and stability of the area for the next 20 years. The implications of the war in Iraq on the lives of the people and the security of the area are so great that the United States should address this problem more fully. I fully understand the position of the United States on the issue of terrorism but the point is that there are other ways of address terrorism other than counter-violence. We all know that violence begets violence and if the United States does not take concrete moves to end the violence in the area once and for all, this situation will not be resolved in the next several years. I believe that a solution of the problem would be a shift in foreign policies in Iraq. Instead of focusing on counter-terrorism and supporting the armed conflict in the area, the United States government should focus its attention more on the rehabilitation and rebuilding of Iraq through education, economic development and political participation by the people. We must understand that as long as the people in the area feel oppressed and deprived, they will be more prone to violence. Due to the presence of oil in this region, most of us are lead to believe that the economy in these parts of world is doing well. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Although some of the oil rich countries in these areas are dong really well, many of them are struggling to against poverty and deprivation. According to the report of the World Bank in 2006, about one in every five persons in the Middle East and North Africa Region can be
Friday, January 24, 2020
freedol Pain of Freedom in Ibsens A Dolls House :: Dolls House essays
The Pain of Freedom in A Dollââ¬â¢s House Three Sources In Henrik Isben's play, A Dollââ¬â¢s House, the characters of Nora Helmer, Kristine Linde, and Nils Krogstad suffered to achieve their freedom. A woman of the Victorian period, Nora Helmer was both a prisoner of her time as well as a pioneer. In her society women were viewed as a inferior to men and were not provided full legal rights. Women of that era were expected to stay at home and attend to the needs of their spouse and children. Nora was a free spirit just waiting to spread her wings; her husband Torvald would constantly disallow the slightest pleasures that she aspired to have, such as macaroons. Nora lived a life of lies in order to hold her marriage together. She kept herself pleased with little things such as telling Dr. Rank and Mrs. Linde; "I have such a huge desire to say-to hell and be damned!" (Isben 59) Just so she could release some tension that was probably building inside her due to all the restrictions that Torvald had set up, such as forbidding macaroons. The need for her to consume these macaroons behind her controlling husband's back was a way for her to satisfy her sense of needing to be an independent woman. Upon the arrival of her old friend Kristine Linde, Nora took it upon herself to find her friend a job since she had gone through a lot in her life. She asked her husband Torvald, who also happened to be the new manager at the bank if Kristine could have a job and he responded with an afirmative response. Mrs. Helmer had also stated that she had single handedly saved her husband's life when she took out a loan for his benefit. However, in those days women were unable to get a loan without their husband's consent or another male's signature, so Nora took it upon herself to forge her father's signature in order to secure the welfare of Torvald. She saw it as her obligation as a loving wife to break the law so she would be able to save a life, especially when it was the life of her husband. Others though saw it as a criminal offence; Nils Krogstad for example accused Nora of violating the law to which Nora replied: This I refuse to believe.
Wednesday, January 15, 2020
Cross-Border Strategic Alliances and Foreign Market Entry Essay
Introduction It is indisputable that as the world gets globalized, virtually all companies are compelled to expand their market to the international or foreign nations. Expansion into the foreign countries is perceived to be associated with many positive impacts. However, it has been shown that some entry modes are detrimental to the performance of the company or the firm. This implies that before any firm decides to expand, it has to weigh different international entry modes and determine the best mode to use.à This paper discusses one of the modern entry modes, called cross-border strategic alliance. The paper will achieve this by reviewing one of the detailed article cross-border strategic alliances. Analysis The article entitled ââ¬Å"Cross-Border Strategic Alliances and Foreign Market Entryâ⬠by Larry Qiu analyzes how firms are motivated to form cross-border strategic alliances when entering into new markets. The goal of the article trying to answer the question as to why most firms are forming cross-border strategic alliances and also identifying the economic factors that facilitate the formation of such alliances. Utilizing a two-country, multi-firm and three-stage economic model, the author reveals astonishing findings on the manner in which companies enter into international market (Qiu, 2006). The article reveals that the company can enter into an international market in different ways. Some of the ways include export and foreign direct investments. Cross-border mergers and acquisition, according to the article is the modern way in which a country can penetrate other countries. There are other traditional forms such as export and green-field foreign direct investment (FDI). The article analyzes based on the thesis statement that multinationals are shifting from the traditional forms such as FDI to modern forms such as cross-border mergers and acquisitions and cross-border strategic alliances. The factors that are considered to influence the choice of the entry mode include such aspects as variable costs such as trade and transport costs and fixed costs. The author argues that a company may set up just one plant in its own country and uses it to serve both the domestic and foreign markets. According to the article, search firm will be entering into foreign and international countries through export. Alternatively the same firm may opt to set up two plants, one plant in the domestic country and the other in the foreign country. In such a case, the firm will be entering into foreign country through foreign direct investment. The invention of cross-border strategic alliances, according to the article, has compelled most countries to switch from export to FDI. This is because the cross-border strategic alliance is associated with numerous benefits compared with the export strategies (Qiu, 2006). For example it creates different synergies in the domestic and foreign markets. In addition, it promotes production alliances, which help each of the allied firms to reduce production costs both in their domestic plants as well as their foreign plants. As far as distribution costs is concerned, the article argues that the cross-border marketing, which is a product of the cross-border strategic alliance, reduces the allied firmsââ¬â¢ distribution costs in their foreign market (Qiu, 2006). Conclusion The foregoing analysis has shown why cross-border strategic alliance is becoming the most preferred mode of entry as far as international trade is concerned. Compared to other entry mode methods, cross-border strategic alliances create different synergies in the domestic and foreign markets (Qiu, 2006). Some of the synergies include production cost synergies and distribution costs synergies. These synergies helps the company reduce the production and distribution costs and hence get profits. References Qiu, L. D. (2006). Cross-Border Strategicà Alliances and Foreign Market Entry. Hong Kong à à à à University of Science and Technology. Retrieved from: à à http://www.etsg.org/ETSG2006/papers/Qiu.pdf Ã
Tuesday, January 7, 2020
The Elusive Promise Of Indigenous Development Rights,...
How are social movements informed by culture? What roles can culture play in advancing social movements? These are two important questions raised in Karen Engleââ¬â¢s The Elusive Promise of Indigenous Development: Rights, Culture, Strategy. Asking how indigenous advocacy has gotten where it is, Engle offers a provocative examination of international, regional, and domestic law related to indigenous peoples (and other groups that have ââ¬Å"piggy-backedâ⬠on the successes of indigenous movements). A critical legal scholar, Engle starts her query by asking the tough questions. Rather than assuming that the indigenous rights movementââ¬â¢s conquests have been always for the better, she questions instead the movementââ¬â¢s early fundamental choices and their ââ¬Å"unintended consequencesâ⬠and ââ¬Å"dark sides.â⬠This critical look at the evolution of indigenous rights (which, she contends, are largely based on different versions of ââ¬Å"cultureâ⬠) is critical for reassessing indigenous advocacy, and moving it beyond essentialized and reified understandings of culture and identity. Engle is highly critical of ââ¬Å"strategic essentialism,â⬠which, despite the advances it has enabled in indigenous advocacy, has ultimately failed to challenge the law or push for its transformation. The very tool that once enabled indigenous advocacy to gain a first port of entry into law now stalls indigenous development, the ultimate goal of indigenous advocacy. ââ¬Å"Deploy[ing] a self-conscious strategy of multidisciplinarity thatShow MoreRelatedList Of Some Papers And Presentations3063 Words à |à 13 Pagesfrom constructivism theory, international law approach. Principle of Legality and Utilitarianism: A Review of Article Seven of European Convention on Human Rights. (2008). Utilitarian have it as basis of reason that, actions that produces the greatest happiness whether morally right or wrong should be made legal. Actions are right when they maximize the good. 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Monday, December 30, 2019
Interest In Video Games - Free Essay Example
Sample details Pages: 9 Words: 2716 Downloads: 7 Date added: 2019/05/07 Category Entertainment Essay Level High school Tags: Video Games Essay Did you like this example? Introduction Globally people have developed an interest in online gaming and video games. Video games encompass a wide audience, from casual players to professional competitors. The industries strong continual growth in revenue is a sure sign of this fact; however, there are major security concerns for online gamers that need to be addressed from a cybersecurity aspect. Donââ¬â¢t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Interest In Video Games" essay for you Create order This term paper focuses on online video gaming, and how the online gaming industry is a target for scams, fraud and hacks as well as some previous major scams and cyber vulnerabilities. This paper will address, as well, whether companies or businesses that create these games have some security in place and if not, how they should protect their users information. Scams Any fraudulent business or scheme that takes money or other goods from an unsuspecting person is known as a scam (Computer Hope, 2017). The Internet has made it easier for thousands of scams to occur daily. In the past couple of years, online gaming scams have soared in an industry that is said to be worth more than $15 billion dollars. In an article, the author identifies seven of the most common types of online gaming scams from Internet fraud to phishing scheme traps, to phony jobs that allure users to test video games. Other scams include fraudulent cellphone use and charges, virtual gold and other imaginary credits bought with real cash, and reliability on illegal forms of content sharing (K, n.d.). Amongst these threats include cellphone dialers, who downloaded an anti-terrorism game onto the victims cellphones, which results in long distance and premium calls being made. Cell phone users will run virtual businesses and other activities through the earning of credits obtained by playing social networking games (K, n.d.). Since credits are so hard to come by, the victims of these games oftentimes encounter other players or even receive emails where they can earn free credits if they view ads or watch a short clip or take part in other quizzes. When users take these test your IQ quizzes, they have to input their cellphone number to obtain the results and some advertising-driven offers are not considered genuine (Keith, n.d.). Lurking in the small, fine print of these offers lays a trick that is old and familiar which pushes the victims to sign up for a recurring monthly fee, of 5-10 dollars. Another deceitful attack is when scammers trick their victims in a one-time fee, typicall y $40 or less, allowing the victim unlimited downloads of most PC or device games like PSPs and Xbox (Keith, n.d.). The users do no realize that they are getting a set of links to torrent sites that enable users to swap games and other files. When a user downloads from a torrent site, they commit an illicit of piracy. These file sharing sites often come riddled with malware, which can further endanger the victims information. The most common scam, phishing, is when attackers send legitimate looking emails to players, asking for information regarding their account, in order to resolve an issue or give a ?special promotion. Once a victim responds to these emails, their original account and information is in jeopardy. One topic in the phishing emails could be the promise of virtual assets like gaming credits, or special equipment which can be bought and sold between players. Amongst this virtual trade lie scammers who sell items they do not have, in hopes of making a quick buck from pl ayers. Scammers will promise, as well, video game testing positions, with pay up to $100 an hour, a list of dead leads for a hefty price, or useless training (Keith, n.d.). Another article that was found talks about seven ways modern games have turned into scams. The seven ways are: 1.) hundred-dollar buttons, 2.) paying for healing, 3.) EAs rating scam, 4.) retroactive ruination, 5.) breaking pieces of the game to sell, 6.) undoing your money, and 7.) turning games into chores (McKinney, 2015). In the game Super Monster Bros, Mario remade with Pok?à ©mon sprites, every second tap that a child does on the screen will bring up a purchase confirmation for items, usually that cost $100 dollars. If a child hits yes or sure at the alert that pops up at the start of a new game then that child downloaded a Trojan horse and not a new game and will require the parents credit card. McKinney states that in Dungeon Hunter 4, your options are ?FIGHT, ?ITEM, and ?CREDIT CARD, because you have to buy healing potions (2015). Apparently, each player starts each day with three healing potions. The only way to get more is to pay cash money for them. A game that carves itself into pieces, where the player has to buy items in order to move on, would be Demons score (McKinney, 2015). Demons Scoreis a music/rhythm game where each costume unlocks a new musical theme. A player starts the game with only one costume so if that player wanted to beat the game without buying the extras, he/she would have to repeatedly play the same musical level. On the other hand, there are players who invest time and money in games to continue on with the story just to have it shutdown. SimCity Social, The Sims Social and Pet Society were gaming worlds that EA casually informed its players that they would be shutting down. In that case, the players lost the money that they had invested or bought on those games and EA did not want to give them the money back (McKinney, 2015). The author SebastianZ (Z), an employee with Symantec, mentioned that most phishing attempts target most popular games that have the biggest base of players (2014). Nowadays the cherry on top would be Blizzard. Blizzard is an innovator in the online gaming community as they have created games such as World of Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft and a few others, which are manageable by one shared account, Battle.net and may include a players gaming data, real payment information, such as Paypal or Credit Card information. However, Blizzard is aware of phishing attempts that target unaware gamers and tries to educate and gives recommendations on what not-to-do if one is faced as a target for a phishing email. Phishing does not necessary mean that it will come in email form, according to Z. An online chat system or in-game mail system can be found in every online game nowadays. TrendLabs gives an example of an in-game phishing attack for World of Warcraft. Attackers were tempting the gamers by sending them invitations to beta-testing of World of Warcraft expansion: Mists of Pandaria. If the users participated, they would get a free in-game mount obtained by following the provided link. The player clicks on the link and is brought to a website that poses as a legitimate Battle.net page. Their account would be compromised as soon as they logged in to claim the reward (Z, 2014). Z goes on to explain that in-game trade, account trade or sale, gold and items sale and power leveling are common online game scams that a user may encounter. Vulnerabilities Just like the online gaming industry is prone to scams, it is subjected as well to constant vulnerabilities like distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, spoofed websites, money being stolen with ransomware and scareware, brute force attacks and keyloggers, social engineering techniques, and more. In 2011, the world saw Sonys PlayStation network become a victim of a high-profile DDoS attack and according to Ma, the attacks have gotten more powerful and more frequent (2017). Over the years, companies like Xbox Live, Nintendo, League of Legends, Blizzard, and smaller networks have all suffered devastating DDoS attacks. Since DDoS attacks are growing in frequency and severity, gaming networks that have latency and outage issues struggle (Ma, 2017). Ma in her article, states three types of DDoS attacks that negatively impact gaming servers. The three attacks are: volumetric attacks, protocol attacks and application layer attacks (2017). Volumetric attacks are brute force attacks tha t can include Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) floods, User Datagram Protocol (UDP) floods and spoof packets. When this attack occurs, the bandwidth is flooded and access to online resources is blocked. Protocol attacks target the online server resources that can affect communication equipment such as, firewall and load balancers (Ma, 2017). The most sophisticated types of DDoS attacks, the application layer attacks, are the attacks that mimic human user behavior making them hard to detect. The gaming company Valve owns the multi-OS platform, Steam, which is an e-store for video games. According to Dickson, Steam has more than 125 million members, 12 million concurrent users and thousands of games (2016). Steam offers features for game inventories, trading cards and other valuable goods that users can purchase and attach to their accounts. Cook(a), Dickson and Paganini(a) both state in their articles that a new breed of malware, Steam Stealer, that is responsible for the hij acking of millions of user accounts (2016). All three authors state that Steam, in 2015, admitted that about 77,000 Steam accounts are stolen every month. Kaspersky Lab has identified more than 1,200 specimens of the malware (Dickson, 2016). Cook describes the grey market as the biggest unintended consequence of video games since the move to online (2016a). The grey market is where virtual items through regular game play are sold for real money, with sellers ranging from U.S. college students working for beer money to Chinese children sitting at Internet cafes for 20 hours a day (Cook, 2016a). Paganini states in his article that in 2015 Lizard Squad, a hacktivism group, knocked Sonys PlayStation Network and Microsofts Xbox Live offline on Christmas Day, which affected thousands of gamers and prevented them from accessing both services (2016a). Paganini says that spoofed websites are fake websites that contain malware, where unsuspecting users click on them and have their information stolen. Cybercriminals in 2015 were infecting gamers machines with ransomware. This caused users to not be able to play any of their games until they paid a Bitcoin ransom (Paganini, 2016a). Sony, Ubisoft and others are no exception where cybercriminals pursue log-in usernames and passwords (Paganini, 2016a). In another article by Paganini, Pok?à ©mon Go was a game that everyone worldwide went nuts for. Pok?à ©mon Go uses augmented reality and the hacking group, PoodleCorp, claimed credit for taking down the servers with DDoS attack (2016b). Users in Europe and US were not able to access the gaming platform because PoodleCorp flooded the servers of the company with so many requests that the servers crashed. Paganini says that PoodleCorp claims it was a test for a bigger offensive which is the most concerning aspect of the attack (2016b). Amir mentions in his article that PoodleCorp is claiming responsibility for DDoS attacks on Blizzard and League of Legend servers. Riot Games created League of Legends, a multiplayer online battle arena video game, for Microsoft Windows and OS X (Amir, 2016). Angry players took their rage to Twitter asking Blizzard support handle about the DDoS attacks. According to Amir, League of Legends decided not to talk about the attack and decided to solve things internally (2016). As if users did not have enough to worry about, Porolli states in his article five threats that online gamers face, which are in no particular order: 1.) TeslaCrypt, 2.) password stealers, 3.) fake game cracks, 4.) fake apps and 5.) phishing. TeslaCrypt falls under malware and it encrypts game-play data for dozens of video games, prompting the user to pay a ransom to decrypt those files. Saved game files, configuration files or game items from Call of Duty and Minecraft were targeted by TeslaCrypt which blocked access. Porolli remarks that TeslaCrypt is no longer operational but the ransomware is still spreading and it not that effective since current games are often designed to save games and settings on the cloud servers (2016). Password stealers are where hackers used social engineering techniques or deceit, through chat message, to have victims install an application. Once a victim downloads the application, which is really malicious software, the victims account credentials are stolen. Another social engineering technique is where players think he/she is installing a crack but the file that is downloaded contains malware and sometimes it cannot bypass the game protections (Porolli, 2016). Among the many games at Google play, an Android Trojan is hidden where attackers can control the Android devices remotely. This Trojan imitates games like Plants vs. Zombies 2 or Subway Surfers. In the year 2016, the video game industry saw a ton of cyber incidents, according to Cook. June 3, 2016 was when Blizzard released Overwatch and within in the first week, thousands of players were permanently banned for cheating. July 7, 2016, Overwatch cheat makers were sued by Blizzard for copyright infringement. Blizzard quoted, millions or tens of millions of dollars in revenue were lost as a result (Cook, 2016b). TinyBuild accused G2A for selling $450,000 worth of stolen game keys on August 1, 2016. On November 14, 2016, hackers stole $15M to $18M in coins from EA, Electronic Arts, FIFA, over a period of two years. The FBI ended up getting involved and the result was the hackers went on trial (Cook, 2016b). Security Who protects the gamers from DDoS attacks and the other vulnerabilities that were mentioned? The responsibility falls to game developers and publishers. PlayFab is a gaming company that provides services for building MMO and other connect games, and tools for operating them, which means keeping track of what players, are doing and customizing the game around their activities, using targeting techniques (Cawley, 2015). PlayFab conducted a survey, with 70% of respondents stated they were unaware that any game company had a security breach. This is a surprise since online gaming breaches have been happening for years. The survey reveale that security is given a back seat and that the game developers and publishers are not dealing with breaches responsibly or openly. Cawley discusses that in the gaming industry, online security issues need to be dealt with and not placed on the back burner (2015). Boutilier tells in his article that Ubisoft, a gaming studio, uses the customer data primarily for their internal marketing and demographic studies according to St?à ©phanie Perotti, a vice president with gaming studio Ubisoft. Ubisoft is not the only company that uses its gamers data to improve its ability to sell games. Other companies do it as well. Ubisoft can collect, at any time, information on its customers gaming habits from: the unique identity of the gaming console that was purchased, a users Internet provider, dates and times spent playing Ubisoft games, game scores, metrics and statistics and how much money is spent in-game (Boutilier, 2015). Perotti states, Ubisoft takes the privacy and security of personal information very seriously. If a company will not protect a users data then the user has ways to keep their information safe. Cawley mentions some safety tips a user can do. They are: 1.) do not use the same passwords in multiple games, websites and services, 2.) stick with well-known platforms, 3.) avoid buying virtual goods and credit outside of the game, 4.) use games that accept two-factor authentication, 5.) avoid ad-supported games on smartphones and tablets and 6.) resist the temptation to buy and download cheats from grind automation to anything claiming you can gain game cash for little effort (Cawley, 2015). Two-factor authentication, called 2FA or two-step verification, is a method that requires two different ways to verify someones identity. A user can use his/hers cellphone in addition to a password to protecting their account. Stegner says that Playstation, Xbox, Steam, GOG, Good Old Games, Origin, and uPlay all have ways to enable two-factor authentication (2017). Nintendo does not offer two-factor authentication so a user should choose a hard password that would take years for someone to figure out (Stegner, 2017). Symantec gives tips on how to keep your gaming account secure. The tips are: 1.) always use a secure password and change it every three months, 2.) educate oneself about phishing scams and what to be on the lookout for, 3.) be wary of online gaming forums, 4.) secure ones home network, 5.) remember that gaming companies will never contact a user asking for their credentials and to go directly to the game companys website if there are any issues and 6.) if the gaming company has had a data breach then go to the account immediately and try to change the password. If a user cannot change the password then he/she must contact the gaming company directly.
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