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Spotify has notified its users of unauthorized access detected in its systems and has pushed out an updated Android app in response.

The evidence of the data breached showed that only one single user was affected, and that user has already been contacted by Spotify. Information at risk did not appear to include the users' password, payment or other financial information. There is also no reason to assume that other users are currently at risk.

Nevertheless, Spotify has pushed out a new app for Android devices and disabled older apps, forcing users to upgrade. It also has asked certain Spotify users to re-enter their username and password to log in.

"As always, Spotify does not recommend installing Android applications from anywhere other than Google Play or Amazon Appstore," wrote Oskar Stål, CTO, Spotify.

"At this time there is no action recommended for iOS and Windows Phone users."

'Watch Dogs,' easily the biggest blockbuster multiplatform game of the year so far, has been a drag for PC gamers.

Ubisoft uses its uPlay client as DRM to authenticate players, but many gamers cannot log-in, some were unable to create uPlay accounts, and even more saw their game crash in the middle of missions.

The studio has been working on fixes, and most seem to have been fixed, but not everyone is satisfied yet.

As of 7:30pm EST, Ubisoft says the login issues are almost completely resolved.

Watch Dogs came out this week for PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.

The authentication issue affecting our online services is almost resolved. Follow @UbisoftSupport for the latest info.

-- Watch Dogs (@watchdogsgame) May 29, 2014

New Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has made it clear that the company is looking to hold onto its current gaming and search businesses.

While this is not really a surprise, analysts have often asked the company if they plan to divest the properties, both of which have been large drains on the company's resources over time, but have become popular as well.

Nadella says Bing serves about 30 percent of the search market, behind Google by a long shot, but still significant. Besides simple search, Bing also uses the tech to power search products used in Windows 8.1.

Xbox, which recently headed into its third-generation with the launch of the Xbox One last November, is another core product that Nadella has no intent on selling any time soon.

Source:
TechCrunch

Nearly two weeks after it was first reported, Apple has confirmed their acquisition of premium headphone and streaming music company Beats Electronics.

Both companies confirmed the synergies of a merger, which will include the Beats brand remaining separate from Apple's but with Apple selling the headphones and offering iTunes alongside the Beats streaming service.

Beats' head executives Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre will now work with Eddy Cue, Apple's head of Internet services. Beats was founded in 2006 by Iovine, the powerful music executive and Dre, the rapper and entrepreneur.

Apple CEO Tim Cook praised the talents of Dr. Dre and Iovine while also praising the new streaming service. "These guys are really unique," Mr. Cook said. "It's like finding the precise grain of sand on the beach. They're rare and very hard to find."

For the $3 billion, Apple is paying $2.6 billion in cash and $400 million in stock. Despite being Apple's largest acquisition of all-time, the purchasing price is barely a dent in the company's incredible $155 billion cash hoard.

Hector Xavier Monsegur aka Sabu, hacker and ex-leader of LulzSec, has been sentenced to time served and set free, after facing potentially over 25 years in jail.

U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska credited the hacker with helping the FBI prevent over 300 cyber attacks and "extraordinary assistance" with law enforcement and the U.S. government.

When Sabu was originally confronted by the FBI over his activities with Anonymous, the hacker immediately began cooperating. "That personal characteristic of turning on a dime and doing good instead of evil is the important factor in this sentence," Preska said. "You've done as much as any human being can do in terms of helping the government to make up for past wrongs and to avert other damage to probably millions of people."

Assistant U.S. Attorney James Pastore asked for leniency during the sentencing. "It's difficult to quantify Mr. Monsegur's cooperation," said Pastore, "He was able to unmask and thwart outright or minimize hundreds of attacks."

Sabu "worked around the clock" recruiting and talking to hackers around the world (then passing the info on) after he began cooperating, while also preventing cyber attacks on major targets including the U.S. Senate, the water supply of a major U.S. city and many corporations and law enforcement agencies.

Google's incredible self-driving car project has taken its next step, with Google unveiling a prototype that does not have brakes nor a steering wheel, thus putting 100 percent of the burden of driving on the car.

Reads Google's release:
"Just imagine: You can take a trip downtown at lunchtime without a 20-minute buffer to find parking. Seniors can keep their freedom even if they can't keep their car keys. And drunk and distracted driving? History.

We're now exploring what fully self-driving vehicles would look like by building some prototypes; they'll be designed to operate safely and autonomously without requiring human intervention. They won't have a steering wheel, accelerator pedal, or brake pedal... because they don't need them. Our software and sensors do all the work. The vehicles will be very basic--we want to learn from them and adapt them as quickly as possible--but they will take you where you want to go at the push of a button. And that's an important step toward improving road safety and transforming mobility for millions of people. "

The cars feature sensors that can detect objects in all directions as far out as 240 yards, and the original prototypes can only go 25 mph as Google has capped the speeds.

According to Sony CEO Kaz Hirai, about 50 percent of all PlayStation 4 owners also subscribe to PlayStation Plus.

To date, the company has sold over 7 million units, suggesting there are at least 3.5 million PS Plus subscribers paying up to $50 per year for access to online multiplayer and cloud saves.

Hirai also noted that the PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Network have over 52 million users around the globe.

Last week, we reported that Sony believed the PS4 will be more profitable for the company than the PS2, which sold over 155 million units during its lifetime.

LG has unveiled their oft-leaked G3 flagship device officially, packing the most impressive specs yet seen on a smartphone.

Featuring a 5.5-inch QuadHD 2560 x 1440 IPS display (538ppi), the bezels are also thinner than last year's G2 with a screen ratio of 76.4 percent.

Under the hood is 3GB RAM, a high-end quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor, 32GB internal storage and a microSD slot in case you need more room. On the back side there is a 13MP OIS+ (Optical Image Stabilizer Plus) camera with "revolutionary Laser Auto Focus that can shoot stunningly sharp images in a fraction of the time required by conventional phone cameras" and the device has a massive 3000mAh battery. The smartphone is quad-band, LTE-capable, has NFC and can wirelessly charged.

The wearables market, quickly growing with new products seemingly launching daily from different OEMs, seems to have a few clear winners.

For the Q1 2014, research firm Canalys says Fitbit led the way with about 50 percent of overall shipments, while Pebble (with its new Steel), was a leader for smartwatches.

During the quarter, startup Pebble jumped to 35 percent, followed by Sony at 29 percent and Samsung at 23 percent. The rest of the market took just 13 percent share.

'Pebble Technology launched the Pebble Steel and the Pebble appstore and grew at a healthy rate during Q1, managing to achieve smart band market leadership for the quarter with a 35% share of worldwide shipments, ahead of both Sony and Samsung,' said Chris Jones, VP and Principal Analyst. 'Canalys' quarterly estimates showed that total smart band shipments fell short of half a million units. This is largely because Samsung's shipments were down dramatically quarter on quarter as it had strong sell-in for Q4 and then cleared inventory in preparation for its Gear product refresh in early Q2. The company must make some big steps to improve sell-through and customer satisfaction with its new products.'

Sony CEO Kaz Hirai has said the PlayStation 4 will very likely be more profitable over time than the PlayStation 2, which is quite the feat given that the console is the best selling at all-time at 150 million units shipped.

The PS4 recently reached 7 million units sold since its launch just over 6 months ago.

"It is likely that PS4 will become the platform which exceeds the profits earned with PS2," says Hirai, thanks to strong hardware sales and growing popularity for high margin digital services.

Sales for Sony's gaming division have been growing significantly, and Sony expects to sell 17 million PS4 and PS3 consoles during the current financial year.

Sony takes a small loss per hardware unit sold, but quickly recoups if the customer purchase a couple of games or signs up for PlayStation Plus. There were no options for digital downloads for the PS2, which launched in 2000, but hardware sales were more than significant. The PS3 lost the company hundreds of dollars per console sold, and it took over four years for Sony to break even.

According to Cisco's security research, Microsoft's Silverlight is now the most vulnerable and dangerous plugin, surpassing perennial list toppers like Java and Flash.

The web video and interactive content plugin has seen a large increase in attacks from hackers, say the researchers, and while users are now well aware of the dangers of outdated Java software, many have no clue about Silverlight.

"Silverlight exploits are also ideal because Silverlight continues to gain rich Internet application market share, perhaps surpassing Java, and Microsoft's life cycle schedule suggests Silverlight 5 will be supported through October, 2021," says the report.

Current malware attacks "use a Silverlight file to trigger the same CVE-2013-3896 vulnerability, but packages the exploit differently and attempts obfuscation through AES encryption." The CVE-2013-3986 exploit was already patched four months ago, but a majority of users have outdated Silverlight installs. Silverlight, unlike many Microsoft products, does not self-update.

Earlier this week, it was confirmed that popular online marketplace eBay was hit by a cyber attack and personal information for a substantial amount of users was stolen.

Yesterday, the company urged 145 million users to change their passwords, and to change those passwords on other sites if they use the same username and password elsewhere.

The company acknowledged that emails, encrypted passwords, birth dates and full mailing addresses were stolen during the attack from late March. Financial information and PayPal details were not compromised.

EBay spokeswoman Amanda Miller said the company uses "sophisticated," proprietary hashing and salting for passwords, but security analysts believe it is just a matter of time before they are unscrambled.

The company added that there had not been any increase in fraudulent activity on the site since the breach. Attackers managed to obtain logins for some eBay employees, giving them access to the corporate network and eventually to exploit databases.

Mojang has announced this week that its popular Minecraft game will be headed to the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PS Vita this summer.

For both of the next-gen consoles, if you own the game for their predecessor console (Xbox 360 or PS3) you can get the updated title for an upgrade price of $5. Otherwise the game will cost $19.99 for new buyers.

The game will be available in the Xbox Live Marketplace in August and Xbox 360 version owners can import saved game data across consoles, as well as move their skins and texture packs over.

For the PS4, you will be able to import saves from the PS3 edition but you cannot import back to the PS3. The Vita version will go on sale at the same time for $20 bundled with the PS3 version.

Vivendi has announced it will sell another piece of its stake in game studio Activision Blizzard.

The corporation says it will be selling half of its remaining stake for over $850 million, looking to use the funds to pay down debt and re-focus on core assets like Universal Music and Canal Plus.

Altogether, the company will be selling 41.5 million shares (almost 6 percent of the company) and this follows Vivendi's sale of almost 85 percent of its share last year for $8.2 billion.

Vivendi says it eventually wants to sell off its entire stake, but cannot move the rest of the shares until 2015 due to its deal with Activision. The company has been selling off assets at a fast pace, recently selling Moroccan phone company Maroc Telecom and France's second largest carrier SFR for over £14 billion.

Activision Blizzard is best known for the Call of Duty series and the popular MMO World of Warcraft series.

The Russian government-backed national telecom Rostelecom has debuted its new search engine, Sputnik.ru, in efforts to rival Google and other major players in the industry including Russia's own Yandex.

Launched in beta, the search engine will have its hands full against Yandex, which has 62 percent share in the nation. Google Russia has 27.6 percent.

Russia's Sputnik 1 satellite was launched into low Earth orbit in the late 1950s, and set off the "space race" between the U.S. and Russia. The name chosen for the search engine will undoubtedly bring back some memories.

The new Sputnik project was run by Alexey Basov, a Rostelekom VP with years of experience at sites and services like Mail.Ru, Begun and SpyLOG. Basov says the engine will have a competitive edge over rivals because it will give access to "everyday necessities." For example, its algorithms will help Russians with "social services" like "finding specific drugs in nearby pharmacies or gasoline prices at specific gas stations."

"We are attempting to make Sputnik a niche search engine, and believe that users ... can work with several search engines to solve various problems," added the executive. "Sputnik is oriented toward providing users with social rather than commercial services."