Game Developers Conference is perhaps one of the biggest organizations in the gaming industry, covering everything from gaming hardware to games themselves. This year's GDC event was planned to happen on March 16th, however, due to the Coronavirus COVID-19 concerns, the GDC organization has decided to postpone the event. This doesn't mean that the conference will not happen at all. Instead, the GDC organizers plan to host the event sometime "later in the summer", when hopefully the COVID-19 concerns will settle. To add, Facebook also canceled its F8 Developer Conference, along with Open Compute Project (OCP) Global Summit which also got canceled due to virus outbreak fears.

Being that Computex is happening within three months, there are growing concerns that the event may not happen at all, however, we can hope that the situation will be resolved soon and that we can bring you live coverage of the event.

TSMC today provided an update on the Company's computer virus outbreak on the evening of August 3, which affected a number of computer systems and fab tools in Taiwan. The degree of infection varied by fab. TSMC contained the problem and found a solution, and as of 14:00 Taiwan time, about 80% of the company's impacted tools have been recovered, and the Company expects full recovery on August 6.

TSMC expects this incident to cause shipment delays and additional costs. We estimate the impact to third quarter revenue to be about three percent, and impact to gross margin to be about one percentage point. The Company is confident shipments delayed in third quarter will be recovered in the fourth quarter 2018, and maintains its forecast of high single -digit revenue growth for 2018 in U.S. dollars given on July 19, 2018. Most of TSMC's customers have been notified of this event, and the Company is working closely with customers on their wafer delivery schedule.

TSMC is the most popular semiconductor foundry, has been called the "savior of fabless chipmakers," and is also one of Taiwan's most valuable companies. It's also the principal foundry for chipmakers such as NVIDIA and AMD (GPUs). Its most valuable production, however, is that of Apple's A-series application processors that drive the main breadwinners of the company - iPhones. Imagine the cataclysm unleashed if a virus were to spread in the company that contract-manufactures extremely complex chip designs. According to Reuters, that cataclysm is upon TSMC.

According to DigiTimes, a WannaCry-variant ransomware infected not just workstations at TSMC, but also certain fab machines (which are driven by computers). The infection has caused a shutdown of several of TSMC's fabs, including its high-volume 12-inch ones. These machines apparently run on unpatched Windows 7, probably because they're connected to a private network instead of the Internet. TSMC has tasked all of its human resources to disinfect the affected machines. The company hopes to have its fabs fully operational by Monday (13th August), but not before the downtime affects the supply-chains Apple and other high-value clients. An estimated $179 million is wiped from TSMC's Q3 revenues due to this downtime. Although it could affect shipments of APs to Apple, impact on the inventories of Apple products could be minimal, according to market analysts. It remains to be seen if TSMC's other clients see similarly minimal impact; or if TSMC is prioritizing a trillion-dollar client.

Today Kaspersky Lab announced the discovery of miniFlame, a small and highly flexible malicious program designed to steal data and control infected systems during targeted cyber espionage operations.

miniFlame, also known as SPE, was found by Kaspersky Lab's experts in July 2012, and was originally identified as a Flame module. However, in September 2012, Kaspersky Lab's research team conducted an in-depth analysis of Flame's command & control servers (C&C) and from the analysis found that the miniFlame module was actually an interoperable tool that could be used as an independent malicious program, or concurrently as plug-in for both the Flame and Gauss malware.

Analysis of miniFlame showed there were several versions created between 2010 and 2011, with some variants still being active in the wild. The analysis also revealed new evidence of the cooperation between the creators of Flame and Gauss, as both malicious programs can use miniFlame as a "plug-in" for their operations.

Iomega, an EMC company and a global leader in data protection, today announced the addition of McAfee VirusScan Enterprise to all Iomega StorCenter PX series network storage products.

The combination of McAfee running natively on the Iomega PX series network storage products represents an industry first: an enterprise-class endpoint protection product running natively on desktop and rackmount network storage products designed specifically for small and medium businesses, remote office/branch office installations, and distributed enterprises.

Yes, that's right the maker of notoriously vulnerable software is now blaming you, the user, should you get a virus, trojan or other malware infection on your Windows computer. However, it does look like they have some justification for saying this. For those with long attention spans, Microsoft have just released their 168 page Microsoft Security Intelligence Report 6MB PDF, with the stated aim of providing:

An in-depth perspective on software vulnerabilities and exploits, malicious code threats, and potentially unwanted software in the first half of 2011

The first thing to note about the report is that it is limited to its Malicious Software Removal Tool and Microsoft's other anti-malware products. Zero-day attacks that it can't detect are not included in the findings. So, surely it can't all be the user's fault then? It also means that the security angles from third party security vendors such as Kaspersky, Norton and McAfee aren't represented here.

Last week Reuters reported interesting information on a new virus that can be used to create batteries that can last three times as long as current lithium batteries.

Researchers who have trained a tiny virus to do their bidding said on Thursday they made it build a more efficient and powerful lithium battery. They changed two genes in the virus, called M13, and got it to do two things: build a shell made out of a compound called iron phosphate, and then attach to a carbon nanotube to make a powerful and tiny electrode.
Such an electrode could conceivably make more powerful memory devices such as MP3 players or cellular telephones, and are far more environmentally friendly than current battery technologies, said Angela Belcher, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology materials scientist who led the research.

Read full story

Software giant Microsoft might offer a free anti-virus software next year, the company said on Tuesday. Code-named "Morro," this streamlined solution will be available in the second half of 2009 and will provide comprehensive protection from malware including viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans. This new solution, to be offered at no charge to consumers, will be architected for a smaller footprint that will use fewer computing resources, making it ideal for low-bandwidth scenarios or less powerful PCs.
"Customers around the world have told us that they need comprehensive, ongoing protection from new and existing threats, and we take that concern seriously," said Amy Barzdukas, senior director of product management for the Online Services and Windows Division at Microsoft. "This new, no-cost offering will give us the ability to protect an even greater number of consumers, especially in markets where the growth of new PC purchases is outpaced only by the growth of malware."
When released, "Morro" will be available as a stand-alone download and offer malware protection for the Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems.
With the arrival of "Morro", Microsoft will also discontinue retail sales of its Windows Live OneCare subscription service.

Any techPowerUp! readers who also read The Inquirer may want to stay away from The Inquirer for a while after reports that the site is infected with a virus. According to NOD32, the virus is a variant of the BAT/Emilia.D trojan, although the screenshots would suggest that this could be result of heuristic proection rather than a confirmed infection. The screenshots from VR-Zone are below, so I'd recommend that you don't go to the Inquirer for at least a few hours to be on the safe side, and if you do then make sure your virus software is up-to-date.