Microsoft, major game developer Eidos and gamebook firm Fabled Lands are jointly developing a blockchain card game based on a 1980s best-selling gamebook. According to a press release published on Dec. 1, the new card game will be based on the 1980s best-selling book called “The Way of the Tiger,” written by Jamie Thomson and Mark Smith. The game’s title will be “Arena of Death” and its players will fight in fantasy-themed card battles with features from the original gamebook series. Ensuring card ownership Thomson is also Fabled Lands’ chief executive officer and decided to use blockchain technology because he …

The Microsoft Defender ATP research team shares insights on a new cryptocurrency-stealing malware variant that has infected close to 80,000 computers. On Nov. 26, Microsoft security analysts revealed that the malware, called Dexphot, had already infected close to 80,000 devices since October 2018, reaching its peak in the month of June of this year. The malicious code reportedly hijacks legitimate system processes to disguise its nefarious activity, with the ultimate goal of running a cryptocurrency miner on the infected device. When infected users attempt to remove the malware, monitoring services and scheduled tasks will trigger re-infection. The report reads: “Dexphot …

The Token Taxonomy Initiative (TTI) has unveiled a framework to standardize the construction of tokens. The initiative has made its Token Taxonomy Framework (TTF) available to the public, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph on Nov. 4. The platform-neutral framework will purportedly provide a set of definitions for tokens in various implementations. The TTI includes a common set of concepts, definitions of tokens and their use-cases across industries, a classification hierarchy, a composition framework and other standards. The TTI’s members include major tech, financial, software and blockchain firms including Microsoft, Intel, IBM, ConsenSys, EY, R3 and JPMorgan. The …

Thanks to the high computational flexibility that it offers, the influence of cloud computing on the blockchain space continues to grow. It's less of a surprise, then, that cloud computing giants — such as Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle and Google's parent company Alphabet — are leading the charge to merge blockchain, especially the enterprise type, and the cloud. Microsoft in particular has been actively engaging with blockchain startups that are developing blockchain solutions for the enterprise market, working with them to deploy their solutions on the Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure. The company's aggressive approach to bolstering the blockchain functionalities of Azure …

Microsoft and Intel are backing a new system of reward tokens created by the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA). EEA creates new reward token system The EEA, which sets standards for Ethereum-based blockchain applications in business, shared the developments in a statement with Cointelegraph on Oct. 7. The organization said that it has created a new system of reward tokens that has the support of both software giants. The EEA is a blockchain consortium with over 450 enterprise business members such as Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase, Santander, Accenture, ING, Intel and Cisco. Its newly created token aims to incentivize and reward companies …

Crypto companies often find out the hard way that hackers know their security systems better than they do. As hacks in the crypto world can and often do result in hundreds of millions of dollars worth of tokens being stolen, the fate of a company’s future can often ride on its security measures. In an effort to batten down the hatches, companies offer bug bounties. These bounties are essentially competitions in which hackers are encouraged to try to compromise software. The hackers then submit a vulnerability report to the respective companies so that they are able to patch the bugs …

Neo, a decentralized open source blockchain application platform, announced that it became the first-ever blockchain member of Microsoft’s .NET Foundation. In the press release published on Sept. 24, the platform stated that during the .NET Conference 2019 Neo “joined the .NET Foundation, the Microsoft-created, globally leading open-source foundation,” adding: “Based on their shared open-source heritage, NEO and the .NET Foundation will further empower millions of developers to build the foundation for next-gen Internet. This partnership comes after NEO’s release of Blockchain Toolkit for .NET and NEO Express in September.” Per the announcement, Neo shared a preview of its Blockchain Toolkit …

Cybersecurity company McAfee Labs has released its August 2019 threat report, which notes an increase in cryptojacking campaigns and ransomware attacks in Q1 2019. Cryptojacking on the rise McAfee Labs posted their report on the company’s website on Aug. 28. According to the report, crypto jacking — installing and running a cryptocurrency miner without user permission — has been on the rise, with a 29% increase in crypto jacking campaigns in Q1 2019. Additionally, the company discovered new malware families for both Microsoft Windows and Apple users. One crypto jacking campaign they discovered was PsMiner — a crypto jacker for …

Hybrid blockchain solutions startup Kadena has updated its enterprise blockchain platform on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. On Aug. 27, Kadena announced that its new product called Kadena Scalable Permissioned Blockchain is available on Azure Marketplace for free. Blockchain scalability ambitions Founded by former blockchain experts at United States banking giant JPMorgan, Kadena first released its permissioned blockchain on the Amazon Web Services Marketplace in January 2019. At the time, company co-founder Stuart Popejoy said that existing versions of private blockchains were inadequate due to low scalability. Kadena also claimed that two Fortune 100 firms in the health and insurance industry …

Computer analysts at cybersecurity firm Zscaler ThreatLabZ have found a new type of trojan that targets cryptocurrency users. In a blog post published on Aug. 8, the company reveals that it identified a new remote-access trojan (RAT) that is able to capture administrative control of the targeted computer, retrieve browser history and look for activities involving cryptocurrency, credit cards, business, social media and others. The malware is called Saefko and is written in .NET, a software framework developed by Microsoft and used to develop a wide range of applications. The post further explains: “RATs are usually downloaded as a result …

Blockchain development company Truffle has unveiled plans to expand its fully managed developer suite to include support for the blockchain protocols Corda, Hyperledger Fabric and Tezos. Truffle founder and CEO Tim Coulter announced the company’s plans at TruffleCon 2019 — Truffle’s annual dev conference — on Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington. Coulter commented on how he thinks these tools will pave the way for collaboration via interoperability, saying: “We are empowering developers to build enterprise-grade solutions on any network of their choosing, creating a path for future cross-network collaboration.” According to a press release shared with Cointelegraph, the Truffle Suite …

Tim Wagner, the vice president of engineering at major cryptocurrency platform Coinbase, is reportedly leaving the company. Wagner will purportedly leave Coinbase within the next two weeks, according to a report by CoinDesk on July 30. An unnamed spokesperson for the company is said to have confirmed Wagner’s departure with the news outlet. At press time, Tim Wagner is currently still listed as VP Engineering at Coinbase on his LinkedIn profile. Previous roles at Microsoft and Amazon As previously reported by Cointelegraph, Coinbase initially hired Wagner last August. Wagner previously worked for Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft before joining …