GTA 5 Named Game of the Year at VGX Awards

Tonight, Rockstar’s GTA 5 was awarded Game of the Year at this year’s Spike TV VGX Awards.

GTA 5 sold $1 billion worth of copies in just three days, making it one of the biggest video game launches of all time. The game was also one of the biggest-budget titles ever at $260 million, and took around five years to develop.

GTA 5 didn’t win easily, though, as other nominees for Game of the Year included BioShock Infinite, Super Mario 3D World, The Last of Us, and Tomb Raider. However, seeing as how GTA 5 has become one of the most successful video games, we’re certainly not surprised that Rockstar received the award.

GTA 5 also broke seven Guinness World Records, including best-selling action-adventure video game in 24 hours, best-selling video game in 24 hours, fastest entertainment property to gross $1 billion, fastest video game to gross $1 billion, highest grossing video game in 24 hours, highest revenue generated by an entertainment product in 24 hours and most viewed trailer for an action-adventure video game.

Rockstar sold 11.21 million copies of the game in its first 24 hours of release, and generated revenue of $815.7 million in the first 24 hours, eventually reaching $1 billion in sales after just three days of being on the market. This break’s Activision’s record that was previously held by the Call of Duty series for several years in a row (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 took 16 days to gross $1 billion dollars in sales).

Other big winners at the VGX awards this year include Naughty Dog (Studio of the Year), BioShock Infinite (Best Shooter), Forza 5 (Best Driving Game), Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (Best Action-Adventure Game) and Plants vs. Zombies 2 (Best Mobile Game).

This was the 10th annual VGX awards, with this year being the first year using the “VGX” name. Previously, Spike TV called it the VGAs, standing for “Video Game Awards.” For nostalgic purposes, Madden NFL 2004 won the 2003 Game of the Year, Tony Hawk’s Underground won Best Sports Game and Nascar Thunder 2004 won Best Driving Game.

Microsoft awards $100,000 to researcher for attack technique

Summary: Researcher James Forshaw has won $100,000 from Microsoft's Mitigation Bypass Bounty Program for a new and novel attack technique.

(Image: stock photo)

Microsoft has awarded $100,000 to researcher James Forshaw for a new attack technique which bypasses an attack mitigation in Windows 8.1.

The reward $100,000 is the maximum payout in Microsoft's Mitigation Bypass Bounty program.

Mitigation Bypass is one of three bounty programs announced in June by Microsoft's Katie Moussouris. Another was a special program for critical vulnerabilities in the Internet Explorer 11 Preview.

Last Friday, Moussouris announced six winners in that program, collecting over $28,000.

The third bounty program is the Blue Hat Bonus for Defense, with as much as $50,000 for a defensive technique which would counter an attack technique that can bypass current attack mitigations. No announcements of winners in this program have yet been made. Examples of established attack mitigations are Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), Data Execution Prevention (DEP), and Structured Exception Handler Overwrite Protection (SEHOP).

Forshaw is Head of Vulnerability Research, Context Information Security based in the U.K. He is a regular presenter at security conferences and is the author of the network attack tool Canape.

According to Microsoft, he has produced numerous design-level attack techniques and is very good at it.

Moussouris told me that Microsoft will not be disclosing the nature of the attack(s) for which Forshaw won until they have implemented defenses against them. I asked if Microsoft would wait until then to disclose the attack technique to other vendors who might be affected by it. She said that these techniques are not likely to affect other vendors.

Forshaw provided a statement:

Over the past decade working in secure development and research, I have discovered many interesting security vulnerabilities with a heavy focus of complex logic bugs.  I’m keenly interested in the intellectual puzzle of finding novel exploitation techniques and the creativity it requires.

Microsoft’s Mitigation Bypass Bounty is very important to help shift the focus of bounty programs from offence to defence. It incentivises researchers like me to commit time and effort to security in depth rather than just striving for the total vulnerability count.

To find my winning entry I studied the mitigations available today and after brainstorming I identified a few potential angles. Not all were viable but after some persistence I was finally successful. Receiving the recognition for my entry is exciting to me and my employer Context. It also gives me the satisfaction that I am contributing to improving the security of both Microsoft’s and Context’s customers.” 

Larry Seltzer has long been a recognized expert in technology, with a focus on mobile technology and security in recent years