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Sunday, June 19, 2011

Microsoft Releases An Official Jailbreak and Are Hackers Doing Us A Favor?

Redbox is famously known for its movie rental kiosks located around the US allowing people to walk up and borrow a movie for $1 a day. Now the company is moving into the game rental business by offering a selection of games for $2 a day at 21,000 of there kiosks. Each location will hold 22-28 different titles and will be swapped around over a yet to be announced time frame. Beta testing of game rentals has been going on for 2 years at 5,000 locations and we are now seeing the results of those tests being rolled out to locations everywhere. This move is potentially rewarding to Redbox as they found that kiosks with games alongside movies yielded 10-15% higher revenue than standalone movie rentals. These increased sales are becoming ever more important to the company as net profit dropped 2 percent from the previous year.

Microsoft became well liked throughout the jailbreaking community after announcing that the company would be working with hackers to bring an official jailbreak tool to its Windows Phone 7 devices. The company is delivering on its promise today as it announces the release of a tool which will provide for an overall simple experience while hacking ones phone. This is in comparison to other companies such as Sony and Apple who are in a constant cat and mouse chase with hackers trying to keep users locked out from their systems. The solution Microsoft is offering will cost a small fee which can be payed out over PayPal but to some this fee will be well worth it seeing as they will not have to worry about the company constantly attempting to crack down on them. Jailbreaking the phone will allow users to customize the device with homebrew applications as well as other software modifications.

The hacker group, LulzSec, is once again in the top news of the day as they released a statement telling critics of their tactics that they are indeed doing us all a favor and we should lay off. For a little over a month now the group has been attacking online sites of companies such as Sony as well as Government groups such as the CIA. LulzSec however does not wish us to view these attacks as a bad thing instead looking at how they are helping us. The group is right in a way, that their actions have at the least been helpful in raising knowledge over key security issues in our cyber defense. And as opposed to keeping the exploits secret and abusing the access they had they have warned those affected in order to make them aware of the holes in their systems. For instance the group recently collected the account details of 200,000 Brink users and then rather than using those accounts for their own purposes, released details of the attack allowing those users to change passwords in order to better secure their accounts. Whether the groups actions are right or wrong they have stated that they will not stop until they are brought to justice.

Do you think the actions being taken by LulzSec are good or bad? Leave your comments in the section below and make sure to give the follow button some love. Also feel free to spread the word and grow out the community.

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