Nearly a million websites running the popular Drupal content management system had only hours to update their software before attacks likely compromised the systems, thanks to a widespread vulnerability, the Drupal security team warned this week.

On October 15, the security team for the Drupal content management system announced the discovery of a critical security flaw that could allow attackers to steal data or compromise vulnerable sites. Within seven hours of the announcement, attackers had begun broadly scanning for and attacking Drupal sites, according to the project’s security team, which provided the details in an October 29 public service announcement.

“Systematic attacks were launched against a wide variety of Drupal websites in an attempt to exploit this vulnerability,” the group stated in its update. “If you did not update your site within < 7 hours of the bug being announced, we consider it likely your site was already compromised.”

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Oscar Swartz

After being convicted of “hacking and gross damage,” Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, better known by his nom de hacker "anakata," was sentenced (Google Translate) to 3.5 years in prison by a Danish court on Friday.

One day earlier, the Pirate Bay co-founder was found guilty of illegally accessing the country’s driver’s license database (Google Translate), social security database, and the shared IT system across the Schengen zone, Europe's common passport regions. Using this access, he obtained the e-mail accounts and passwords of 10,000 police officers and tax officials. All of that data was managed by CSC, a large American IT contractor.

Svartholm Warg's accomplice, who was only named in court documents as “T2” in accordance with Danish anonymity law, was sentenced to six months. T2, the court said, was only involved in hacking attempts that took place on February 13 and 14, 2012; Svartholm Warg continued his activities until the end of August 2012.

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Update: When this story was first posted, there was an error with the axis scale/bar size on the above graph that made the PS4's sales look smaller than they are. Ars regrets the error.

Last week, we waded into the somewhat murky waters of console sales number reporting. Our estimate was that Sony had at least 59 percent of the market share in the battle between the PS4 and Xbox One. Since then, newly released numbers, plus a new look at some assumptions about the Xbox One market, have us revising Sony's share of that market upward. We now think it's in the 65 to 67 percent range.

The revised numbers come in part from Sony's quarterly report, which shows that an impressive 13.5 million PlayStation 4 systems have been shipped in the period from the system's launch late last year through September. That's up substantially from 10 million systems sold to consumers through mid-August, suggesting that PS4 sales have picked up considerably during September. Perhaps the the high-profile release of Destiny and its PlayStation-exclusive content has something to do with that.

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Costa Rica has issued an emergency alert after the eruption of Turrialba volcano in the centre of the country.

Over the last couple of years, mini-PCs in the ultra-compact form factor (UCFF) have emerged as one of the bright spots in the troubled PC market. Zotac is no stranger to this segment. In fact, their nano xs units came to the market before the Intel NUC, even though the NUC is credited with kickstarting the UCFF trend. Starting with Ivy Bridge, Intel also began to experiment with Y series CPUs to bring the Core family to the fanless tablet market. Unfortunately, the impact of these SKUs in the tablet market has been minimal. However, Zotac has repurposed the Y series CPUs for the 'ZBOX C Passive Cooling Series' of mini-PCs. The ZBOX CI540 nano, equipped with a Core i5-4210Y, is currently the most powerful unit in the lineup. Read on to identify what Intel's Y series brings to the table for the mini-PC market.

While there were a variety of rumors that Microsoft would soon ship a wearable device of some kind, the actual announcement and release—with mere hours between them—was a bit of a surprise. It was so uncharacteristically un-Microsoft. Not only did the company manage to keep most of the information under wraps until a few hours before the planned public reveal, but it also managed a real launch of real hardware. Not "you can buy it in a few months" or "pre-orders open next week." Instead, we got "you can toddle along to the Microsoft store and pick it up as soon as the doors open."

All this, and a product that's the company's first entrant into a new market, too.

In the box.

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I had a Band delivered a few hours ago (thanks Jeff!) and have had a bit of an opportunity to play with it. The Band is a neatly packaged but rather chunky wristband. There are three sizes of Band available to accommodate different wrist sizes. Fine-tuning of the design is done with the clasp mechanism. The clasp can stick anywhere along a long groove offering perhaps a little over an inch of size adjustment.

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Sure, you can read all the words that follow (and you should!), but first, come with us on a whirlwind video tour of Turn 10 Studios. (video link)

REDMOND, WA—In a relatively anonymous office park about 30 minutes from downtown Seattle, one headquarters clearly stands out from its neighbors. There are unavoidable glimpses of automobile ephemera—Maserati, Lotus, and Mercedes flags, particularly—hanging in the windows, and the parking lot contains a significantly higher concentration of interesting cars than one would expect. It's subtle, but to the cognoscenti it signals "interesting car stuff happens here." Welcome to Turn 10.

Ars editor Sam Machkovech and I recently spent a few hours in the game studio's car-culture drenched halls to learn more about how the fine folks at Turn 10 turn out the various entries in the Forza franchise. If the outside features hint to the workings within, the reception area shouts this office's purpose. That metallic burnt orange McLaren P1 hanging out next to the front desk? It was a version of the car that played cover star for Forza Motorsport 5, although the one serving as gate guard here was, sadly, an undrivable shell and not a full-on, 900 horsepower hybrid hypercar. Despite that fact, it still cost more than $300,000! That carbon fiber bodywork didn't come cheap, it turns out.

Sam Machkovech

Quite a few racing drivers have sat there, helping to tune Forza.

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Sam and I were issued visitor passes, and our host for the day, Turn 10 Content Director John Wendl, led us past the studio’s assorted trophies and into his world. There were fewer racing cockpits in the office than you might expect. A three-screen Xbox One setup took pride of place in the center of the office, complete with the rather good Thrustmaster TX racing wheel we reviewed recently. Sitting forlornly under the stairs was an older, three-screen cockpit that appeared to have the ability to tilt the seat around. This veteran of many a trade show was now gathering dust, obsolete with the move from the Xbox 360 (and Forza Motorsport 4) to the Xbox One.

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A breeder in China's Chendgu province was trying to give these two baby pandas medicine instead of their usual bamboo leaves- and they were having none of it.

A breeder in China's Chendgu province was trying to give these two baby pandas medicine instead of their usual bamboo leaves- and they were having none of it.

The flagship ASUS gaming motherboards are designed to offer the best ASUS’ R&D have to offer and are often the lynchpin in a number of enthusiast builds.  These feature a number of components and software elements that the channel motherboard range does not have, such as GameFirst, SupremeFX or Sonic Radar. ASUS has brought some of these features down their ROG product line to the Maximus VII Gene, Hero and Ranger for more budget oriented builds, however when it comes to pairing a $70 CPU like the overclockable Pentium G3258 with an ROG board, the ROG board might still be 2-2.5x the cost. As a result, ASUS is today announcing a semi-ROG board combining elements from the channel range and the ROG range in order to offer something more cost effective for budget users interested in a bit of overclocking and gaming.  This is the Z97-Pro Gamer.

The Z97-Pro Gamer is almost a cut down version of the Z97-Pro, but with ROG gaming features added. From the channel side of the equation we have M.2 x2 and SATA Express support along with ASMedia controllers for extra USB 3.0 ports and PCIe to PCI connectors. From ROG it borrows some of the aesthetic qualities (red/black heatsinks), SupremeFX audio, ROG oriented DIGI+ control of the power delivery, extended BIOS options and the ROG software package.

The PCIe layout focuses on an x8/x8 split for SLI and Crossfire, with a final PCIe 2.0 x4 from the chipset for additional cards rather than an x8/x4/x4 split overall for tri-AMD gaming which might not scale appropriately with a Pentium CPU. The USB and Ethernet ports are protected individually against electrostatic discharge, with that Ethernet port being an Intel (I218-V I would assume) to be used alongside the GameFirst II packet prioritization software.  The SupremeFX audio hides an ALC1150 codec with PCB separation, EM shields and auto-detecting headphone amplifiers.

As this announcement was made via the ROG website, the North American official announcement might not be far away. At the point in time where the board is officially released, we should learn more about pricing and availability.

Source: ROG

Gallery: ASUS Announces Z97 Pro Gamer: Semi-ROG for Pentium-AE Gaming

It's Halloween and nowhere is it celebrated more than in the US. The BBC Pop Up team went behind the scenes at one of America's scariest haunted houses in Baton Rouge.

Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaore says he will stay in power for a year under a transitional government, following a day of violent protests demanding his resignation.

Unmanned aircraft have been seen flying over many of France's nuclear stations and the authorities don't know where they have come from.

The BBC's Anne Soy reports from Ghana, where health care workers in one hospital serving Liberian refugees have had to use rain coats instead of proper protective gear against Ebola.

Version:next-20141031 (linux-next) Released:2014-10-31

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler speaking to the cable industry in April 2014. NCTA

The head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is reportedly close to proposing a "hybrid approach" to network neutrality in which Internet service providers would be partially reclassified as common carriers, letting the commission take a harder stance against Internet fast lane deals.

However, the proposal would not completely outlaw deals in which Web services pay for faster access to consumers.

As reported Thursday by The Wall Street Journal, the broadband service that ISPs offer to consumers would be maintained as a lightly regulated information service. But the FCC would reclassify the service that ISPs offer at the other end of the network to content providers who deliver data over Internet providers' pipes. This would be a common carrier service subject to utility-style regulation under Title II of the Communications Act.

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Russia has agreed to resume gas supplies to Ukraine over the winter in a deal brokered by the European Union.

A look around a new lab at Pirbright Institute in Surrey, where the world’s most contagious livestock viruses will be kept.

Gottfrid Svartholm Warg (center) could be barred from entering Denmark at his sentencing hearing on Friday. Nicolas Vigier

One of the co-founders of the notorious Pirate Bay website was convicted (Google Translate) Thursday in a major hacking case in Denmark, and could face up to six years in prison.

Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, better known by his nom de hacker "anakata," was found guilty of "hacking and gross damage" after being accused of illegally accessing the country’s driver’s license database (Google Translate), social security database, the shared IT system across the Schengen zone, and the e-mail accounts and passwords of 10,000 police officers and tax officials. All of that data was managed by CSC, a large American IT contractor.

Under Danish law, even after conviction, the defendants are only officially known by anonymous monikers: Svartholm Warg was dubbed "T1," while his still-unnamed 21-year-old Danish co-defendant was named "T2."

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Earlier this month, a Quebecois court in Montreal decided that Google owed a woman $2,250 for picturing her with “part of her breast exposed” in a Street View image. The woman was sitting in front of her house, and although her face was blurred out, she was still identifiable by her coworkers, especially as her car was parked in the driveway without the license plate blurred out.

As GigaOm writes, “Maria Pia Grillo suffered shock and embarrassment when she looked up her house using Google Maps’ Street View feature in 2009 and discovered an image that shows her leaning forward and exposing cleavage.” Grillo complained to Canadian authorites and Google, but when she had no response from Google after several weeks, she wrote a letter to the company saying:

I have informed myself as to my rights concerning this situation through the office of the privacy commissionars of Canada. Under the law my lisence plate should not appear. Moreover, from a safety and security standpoint, the information shown constitutes a total violation. This puts me, my house, my vehicule and my family members that I live with at the mercy of potential predators. I feel very vulnerable knowing that the information is available to anyone with internet access. The damage has been done.

Google never responded—it later told the court that it never received the letter and could not find it in a search. Grillo filed a complaint in 2011 asking Google to blur out more of the image, including most of her body and her license plate. She also asked that Google pay her CAD $45,000 for the depression she suffered when her coworkers “at a well-known bank” found the image and mocked her for it. According to Canadian tabloid Journal de Montreal, Grillo eventually quit her job.

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