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Cybercriminals compromised a German factory and caused "massive" damage to a blast furnace inside of the facility, according to a Federal Office for Information Security report made available by the German government. The company impacted remains unknown, but it looks like they fell victim to a phishing attack that led to malware installation on company computers - and it didn't take long before PCs and factory systems to suffer.

Since the company's employees were not able to maintain control of the blast furnace, there was "massive damage to [the] plant." "The attackers were knowledgeable in conventional IT security and had extensive knowledge of applied control and production processes," according to a recently published report.

As cybercriminals find new methods to conduct cyberespionage, there is growing concern that they can breach critical infrastructure - and cause significant damage - and this German foundry incident is a worrying sign. It's unknown if the hackers intended to just steal data, or cause physical damage, but show how vulnerable computer systems can be.

The Lizard Squad reportedly has taken credit for dropping Microsoft's Xbox Live and Sony's PlayStation Network on Christmas Eve and Christmas day. It's not a complete surprise to hear of the cyberattacks, with the group promising them all month long. Lizard Squad used a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, with the FBI and other hacker groups reportedly targeting them.

Unfortunately, the group demanded 10,000 retweets of a message posted on Twitter, so gamers will be able to access Xbox.com, Xbox Live and other services - and regain playability on PSN. Both Microsoft and Sony are working on connectivity issues, with spotty service available in North America.

It's not a surprise to hear they wanted to target the attack for Christmas, as many gamers plug in their consoles for the first time - or hit the power switch to begin playing a new title.

Techland was aiming for 1080p 60FPS for their upcoming zombie survival shooter 'Dying Light' but the developer has locked things in at 30FPS instead, something that the developer says will provide a "perfectly smooth, gameplay-tailored performance."

The developer has said that a stable 30FPS is better than a varying frame rate, especially for a game where you jump between rooftops, climb buildings and more. Techland has said that the development team considers a consistent frame rate is better for the in-game environments of Dying Light. When talking with GamingBolt, the Lead Game Designer of Dying Light, Maciej Binkowski, would be 1080p 30FPS for both the PS4 and Xbox One.

He reiterated the fact that Dying Light is 30FPS on both consoles, saying "Yes. They're both locked at 30 FPS. We did so much testing and optimizing and eventually came to the conclusion that we needed to lock at 30 FPS to ensure a smooth, fluid experience." Binkowski also mentioned that Dying Light will feature a Subpixel Morphological Anti-Aliasing (SMAA) T2X solution, something that will smooth out the graphics in the game, which should hide the various jaggies. He added "We're using SMAA T2X according to our super brainy hardware guys. That's all I know."

Microsoft has been enjoying the fruits of its labor in the Surface line of devices, with the Surface Pro 3 being a great device for people who don't just want a tablet, or a notebook, but want the best of both world's. Well, now we're hearing the first rumbles of the Surface Pro 4.

The new Surface Pro should feature Intel's upgraded Core M processor, with a display that resembles the Surface Pro 3, launched in two versions. We should expect slight variations between them, most likely concentrating on a smaller, and then bigger display. Microsoft is also poised to provide the Surface Pro 4 with a cheaper price than the Surface Pro 3 currently sells for, which should secure itself many more sales.

Not only that, but we can expect the Surface Pro 4 to launch with Windows 10, as well as the improved Core M processor. These two facts alone should make it a worthy choice against that thinner, fanless MacBook Air that will arrive sometime in 2015.

We've only just reported that Sony Pictures is having a 'limited release' of The Interview, pushing it out to select theaters and digitally, but Apple has come out stating that it is "not interested" in releasing the movie on iTunes for Christmas.

The New York Times is reporting that Sony Pictures talked with Apple, who refused, even pressuring The White House to step in, to no avail. Apple's decision to not provide The Interview on iTunes is, I'm sure, to do with any retaliation with North Korea. Apple won't want the mess and bad publicity that would come with an attack on their internal servers, so they're probably playing it better safe than sorry. Understandable, I guess.

Following a successful data breach targeting Sony Pictures, the Japanese government is increasingly weary of potential North Korea-based cyberattacks. Japan is used to China's ambitious cyberespionage campaigns, but North Korea has steadily improved its own ability to launch successful attacks.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to boost internal cybersecurity defense as the threat of foreign-based attacks reaches frightening levels. There is specific interest in ensuring critical infrastructure, such as its power grid, transportation networks, and gas supplies can continue to function even under continued attack.

"Japan is maintaining close contact with the United States and supporting their handling of this case," said Yoshihide Suga, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary, during a press conference. The Japanese government is relying on strong ties with Washington in a joint-cooperation to increase cybersecurity.

WhatsApp is a near unstoppable messaging client, so I'm sure most people will still balk at the fact Facebook dished out an enormous $22 billion to acquire them earlier this year. The company is now set to launch its new feature, a voice calling function, to its app in the coming weeks or months.

Some new leaked photos are showing us what the latest update to WhatsApp will deliver, where we won't only get voice calling but image files and text support, too. The new details were yanked from the latest version of WhatsApp by Android World, where we can see the new features in all their glory.

We don't know when the voice calling function is coming to WhatsApp, but judging from this information being pulled from the latest version, I'm sure it can't be long now.

The Xbox One is one of the hottest consoles on the market, and Kinect technology is one of the best features. The Kinect, which comes standard with Xbox One, has many more applications than just gaming. In fact, it's being used for some amazing things. Here are just a few of its additional capabilities.

With the use of Kinect recognition, Microsoft has revolutionized the way people exercise. Taking advantage of all the amazing fitness programs available on the Xbox, you can train and exercise right at home with the help of some amazing professionals; and the Kinect can help you with everything from making sure you have the right posture and form during your workout, to monitoring your pulse, temperature and other vital statistics. It can even help you record how many calories you have burned by tracking the movement of your body and temperature change on your skin. In a Samsung article, Santa Barbara fitness instructor Alexandra Williams advises taking a minimalist approach to your workout gear and equipment. So, by using the Kinect as your overall tracking device, it is easy to keep track of your overall health and fitness program.

Hospital professionals are always looking for ways to improve the health, safety and efficiency of their employees when doing delicate medical procedures. Now, with the addition of a Kinect system in the operating rooms, doctors can use hand motions to manipulate and refer to images that they use when performing an operation rather than trying to use a remote or keyboard. This not only gives them more freedom and precise detail, it helps keep the room sterile and safe for the patients.

US Internet, a company that offers fiber-optic service to 30,000 households in Minneapolis, has announced that it will offer 10-gigabit per second internet speed to its customers. This equates to 10,000 Mbps, or an amazing download around 1.25 GB/s. Yes, 1.25 Gigabytes per second.

The cost isn't cheap though, a blazing fast connection will weigh in at $399.00 per month. US Internet describes the service as the fastest internet service the world has seen, and if they manage to deliver the service they will take the crown. US Internet has a relatively small user base, so we shouldn't expect this to expand much further than the Minneapolis area. It is good to see this type of service being deployed, it is very likely the larger ISP's are taking note of US Internet's advances.

"The fastest Internet in the world is going to be here in Minneapolis starting this afternoon," said Joe Caldwell, co-CEO of US Internet. "We're talking about a game-changing speed."

The long saga of the Sony hack is far from over, but Sony has finally taken the step of releasing "The Interview" for purchase on a variety of digital platforms. The Interview is available on Google Play, YouTube Movies, Microsoft's Xbox Video, and a Sony website. The movie was released at 1 PM EST today and is available to stream for $5.99, and for purchase at $14.99. Sony also announced that 300 theaters will play the movie on Thursday.

Sony has taken a considerable beating over the massive hack of the Sony Pictures outfit. The satirical film outlines an assassination attempt of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The pending release triggered strong condemnation from North Korea, which threatened action. Soon after, Sony Pictures was hacked, and the US government claims to have proof that North Korea was behind the attack. After the hacking attack, embarrassing internal Sony documents were released to the public, and the hacking group also threatened violence at any theaters showing the film. Several prominent film distribution companies refused to air the movie, leading Sony Pictures to pull the movie. That announcement met with widespread criticism, particularly from President Obama, who likened the move to cowing to terrorists.

The digital release of a mainstream movie is unprecedented, but provides Sony with an easy distribution method that also allows them to save face. The major film distribution companies are still refusing to show the film, and the 300 theaters that will be showing the film are all independent chains. The movie will undoubtedly garner much more interest due to the press coverage of the hacking attack. If demand is strong enough it might provide an interesting insight into the possibility of future mainstream movies being released on digital platforms.

The legal battle between Samsung and NVIDIA continues as the US International Trade Commission (ITC) launches an investigation into Samsung claims that NVIDIA is violating its patents. Samsung's lawsuit is a retaliatory move after NVIDIA fired the opening salvo in the legal battle in September. NVIDIA sued both Samsung and Qualcomm for infringing their graphic patents in September. NVIDIA is playing hardball and asking for the ITC to block shipments of several of Samsung's mobile devices in the US, including the Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy S5 and Galaxy S4.

Samsung is seeking a similar ban on NVIDIA products in the US, but the much smaller NVIDIA seems to have more at stake. NVIDIA's lawsuit against Samsung only touches a small number of Samsung products, but the Samsung lawsuit affects nearly every NVIDIA product, including the Shield, GeForce processors, Tegra mobile chips, Quadro cards, Tesla cards, and Grid computing products. Samsung is accusing NVIDIA and 11 of their partners of violating four of their patents on chips structures, memory arrays and other chip technologies. These battles can take years to play out, and the ITC has already launched an investigation into Samsung regarding NVIDIA's claims.

NVIDIA's chief legal counsel, David Shannon, took to his blog to to expand on the current situation. "NVIDIA remains focused on ensuring that we receive fair compensation from Samsung for using our technology in Galaxy phones and tablets," Shannon wrote. "We won't allow ourselves to get sidetracked by the company's attempts to intimidate our partners who have nothing to do with the unlicensed use of our IP. We look forward to the court setting this right."

South Korea hopes the Chinese government will be cooperative in a data breach investigation recently suffered by the Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co. just a few days ago. Some of the IP addresses used to compromise the Korean company are linked to a northeastern Chinese city close to the border with North Korea, according to an unnamed South Korean government official.

Despite its geographic location, there still isn't enough evidence to accuse China or North Korea of being directly involved in the cyberattack - although China is suspected of targeting the United States and its allies, while North Korea has been accused of previous cyber breaches suffered by South Korean companies.

"When we have the cooperation of the Chinese, where of course we don't have jurisdiction, we will be asking for checks or maybe a search of the location of the IP address," a South Korean official recently said. "As we're doing this, there is a possibility that the IP addresses in China are not the final source but used in a routing. It's possible (the network) in China was used (remotely) from some other location."

The dawn of the new era of gaming is breaking on the horizon. The rise of cloud gaming has promised a future where all game rendering and processing is handled in a remote datacenter and merely streamed to the user. The new consoles have started a partial transition to this future of gaming, but it seems that the future is now. Samsung's newest 2015 TV's will feature an integrated app that will allow users to play games from the PlayStation Now service, but without a console.

All the viewer needs is a DualShock controller and the app. An initial library of 200 PS3 games will be available. Integrating this service into smart TV's could foreshadow a world without consoles, but there are a few caveats. Streaming high-quality content always comes with bandwidth and latency concerns, making a solid internet connection a must. Any loss of internet will end the gaming session, but the game will be saved to the cloud.

It will be interesting to see how the systems operate when hundreds of thousands, and millions, begin to use these new TV's. The early games are notably from the PS3, and not the PS4. There are likely a few reasons. PS4 games require more computation and have better graphics, so it might not be feasible at this point to process all of the data for millions of users at a remote location, let alone provide the bandwidth to stream it with acceptable performance.

Sony doesn't want a repeat of its data breach suffered by Sony Pictures, and hopes a new Director of Vulnerability Management Engineering will be able to lend a hand. The company is still trying to lick its wounds after foreign cyberattackers brought Sony Pictures to its knees, with corporate emails and movies stolen, along with employee personal information.

Applicants must have a minimum of 10 years information security experience and five years of experience in penetration testing/red teaming. The qualified candidate must have a Master's degree in computer science or another appropriate field, or have equivalent experience.

Sony also posted job listings for junior analysts on the "security operations team," a senior risk management analyst job, senior governance, and a risk and compliance analyst dedicated to security and privacy training.

Movie theater patrons in the UK, a group of 12-year-old girls, faced a major headache when theater management called police over suspected piracy concerns. The children brought their Apple iPhones and iPads into the theater while seeing "The Hunger Games," despite not recording any data, the police were called.

A few members of the group were accused of recording parts of the movie, and the police searched the devices for recordings, but were unable to find anything. The theater allowed them to return to their seats, but they instead decided to wait for their parents to pick them up.

Here is what a mother of one of the girls said following the incident: "Our girls were falsely accused, had the police called on them and then just left in tears. It's outrageous. If they have done this to our children they will do it again."

CD Projekt Red is pretty much finished on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, with the developer prepared for its May 19, 2015 release. The developer has said that it has had more time since delaying the game from its original February 25, 2015 release date to the new May 19, 2015 date to get the game in much better working order.

When talking about the additional development time during an interview with Nerdacy, CD Projekt Red co-founder and CEO Marcin Iwinski said "We are removing the final bugs and still running optimization in various areas. What it will result in is a smoother and more engaging experience and, yes, the game looking better across all platforms. The content is locked, so no content changes are being made at this point. The scale of the open world in the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is unprecedented, so fear not - there is enough gameplay to keep you playing for weeks."

There was also talk of a second playable character in the form of Ciri, to which Iwinski replied "Ciri is this living weapon everyone wants to get a piece of. She has this inner power that is key to stopping the Wild Hunt, but she also has some of her own demons to handle, so she won't allow to be controlled by anyone. We decided to introduce her as a playable character because it adds a lot to the narrative, and offers gamers a unique perspective on the story." He continued, adding "Having said that, Geralt is the main character whom you will be playing most of the time and he is the guy. We think that the introduction of Ciri as a playable character is a great way to allow gamers to see parts of the story from her perspective and make it even more personal."

Valve's new End of the Line update for Team Fortress 2 has just evolved, with the latest Smissmas update. The Smissmas update includes a new mode called Mannpower, with some awesome new features in the form of nine power-up items that any class can use.The new update provides users with a grappling hook, which looks like it can be some serious fun. Check out the video below.

How does Mannpower work? Here's an explanation "It's an in-beta CTF-like game mode with grappling hooks and nine different types of powerups. Mannpower alters a few game rules. For one, random critical hits have been disabled. Additionally, teams won't be able to capture the enemy flag unless your flag is at your base. (When your flag is away from your base, you can touch it to instantly return it to base.) Mannpowers exist in the world and can be picked up by all classes. When picked up they add abilities and enhancements to the player carrying it. Mannpowers can be dropped at any time by hitting your dropitem key, and will drop automatically when the player carrying it is killed. Note that you can only carry one at a time, and that you can't take powerups into respawn rooms."

The video above shows off all of the new weapons that you have to choose from. Let us know what you think! It makes me want to get back into TF2.

If companies needed another reminder on the importance of improving cybersecurity, they can learn from the current predicament tormenting Sony Pictures. C-level executives need to be more involved when it comes to being proactive ensuring cybersecurity strategies at their companies are being implemented properly.

It has been a brutal year for data breaches in the United States, with Sony Pictures joining the unfortunate list of Home Depot, Target, JPMorgan Chase, and multiple other companies that suffered high-profile, very public cybersecurity incidents. Trying to prevent these data breaches is much easier said than done, but many companies have either ignored security recommendations - or overlooked potential fallout - related to security.

"I think the scale of this impact on Sony is what's going to make a lot of C-suites sit up and say 'Wow, we really do need to take this seriously,'" said Rob Sloan, cyber data and content head at Dow Jones Risk & Compliance, in a statement published by Fortune. "They can see the damage being done and it's potentially career-threatening for them and business-ending if they don't have the funds to support them through their troubles."

The remaster of one of the best, if not the best Resident Evil game is coming out next year, a game that will have support for Sony's cross-buy platform. This means that if you purchase the game on your PS3, you can play it on your PS4 without having to buy another version.

The listing of Resident Evil on Sony's PlayStation Store says that if you pre-order the game, it "entitles you to both the PS4 and PS3 versions." Pre-orders also gain an exclusive PS3 theme, too. This cross-buy platform is only available as an incentive to those who pre-order it, but I don't know why Sony would lock it to pre-orders only.

The Resident Evil remaster comes out on January 20, 2015 for the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and PC.

Evolution Studios has taken to Facebook to thank its consumers for the "overwhelming" support for Driveclub's initial launch, and in the months of the game being broken in various parts. Even after the boss of Sony UK came out and said he was embarrassed by the launch of Driveclub on the PS4.

The studio has said that there are some new updates coming next month that should have gamers excited. Evolution Studios wrote "Everyone here at Evolution Studios wants to say thank you for the truly overwhelming level of support from you this year, especially in the time since DRIVECLUB launched in October. Your messages, your feedback, your hot lap videos on YouTube and all of the absolutely amazing screenshots you've shared have all been a huge source of inspiration for the team." The team added "You've all been amazing and we're extremely thankful for your continued support."

"We have many more updates in the works, for the servers and for the game, which we're looking forward to sharing with you in the new year. In the mean time, please don't forget to claim all of the free DRIVECLUB downloads from PlayStation Store if you haven't already and please keep sharing your thoughts and feedback with us, so that DRIVECLUB can continue to evolve around you in 2015," they continued. Evolution Studios finished their pledge to fans with "Thank you all again - we really are uplifted by you on a daily basis. We hope that you all have a great holiday season and we wish you a very Happy New Year!"