analysts

AppWizard
July 9, 2025
Steam remains the largest online gaming store for PC users, despite Epic Games' efforts to compete. Valve takes a 30% revenue cut from developers, while Epic takes only 12% after the first million in revenue. Steam's popularity is attributed to its large community of gamers who often buy games they do not play. Analysts note that Valve has successfully marketed to individuals overwhelmed by entertainment options, creating a scenario where gamers feel they might eventually play the games they purchase. A survey indicated that many players add games to their wishlist without trying them. An example is Chris Wray, who owns 6,062 games on Steam but has only played about 20% of them. Steam frequently offers significant discounts, especially during sales events.
AppWizard
July 8, 2025
A newly identified Android malware family, Qwizzserial, has emerged as a significant threat in Uzbekistan, disguising itself as legitimate financial and government applications. It spreads primarily through Telegram, using deceptive channels to impersonate authorities and financial institutions, luring victims with offers of financial assistance. Upon installation, Qwizzserial requests permissions related to SMS and phone state, prompting users to input sensitive information such as phone numbers and bank card details, which it exfiltrates via the Telegram Bot API or HTTP POST requests. The malware intercepts incoming SMS messages, including one-time passwords (OTPs) for two-factor authentication, and can extract financial information from messages. Analysts from Group-IB have tracked around 100,000 infections linked to Qwizzserial, with confirmed financial losses exceeding ,000,000 within three months. The malware's infection pattern follows a Pareto distribution, with a small subset of samples causing the majority of infections, particularly those impersonating financial institutions. Security solutions have developed detection rules for Qwizzserial, and organizations are encouraged to implement user education and monitoring to mitigate risks. End-users are advised against installing applications from untrusted sources and to scrutinize app permissions. Indicators of Compromise (IOC) include specific C2 domains and file hashes for both example and latest samples of Qwizzserial.
AppWizard
July 4, 2025
Valve Corporation, founded in 1996 by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington, is known for its influential role in the gaming industry, particularly with its groundbreaking title Half-Life, released in 1998. The company has a unique corporate structure and impressive revenue-per-employee metrics, reportedly exceeding .9 million. Valve's Steam platform, launched in 2003, dominates the PC gaming market, accounting for approximately 70% of sales in a sector valued at around billion, with over 100,000 titles available. Steam had an estimated 170 million active monthly users by May 2023. Financially, estimates suggest Steam may have handled around .3 billion in game sales in 2021, yielding a profit of approximately .6 billion from commissions. Valve's employee culture emphasizes self-organization and innovation, though it faces scrutiny regarding content moderation and legal challenges related to market competition.
AppWizard
July 3, 2025
On July 1, Russian authorities began a nationwide trial to restrict access to messaging platforms Telegram and WhatsApp, following President Putin's signing of legislation for a state-controlled "sovereign messenger." Users across Russia reported outages of these services around 11 PM on June 30, with nearly 12,000 outage reports for Telegram and 1,500 for WhatsApp recorded within 24 hours, primarily from the Nizhny Novgorod region and the Republic of Tatarstan. Analysts view this as a "targeted shutdown" in preparation for a potential complete ban, noting that competing platforms did not face similar issues and that access was quickly restored via VPN. This trial follows a law enacted on June 24 for the development of a state-controlled messaging platform under FSB supervision, with plans for features like encrypted chats and digital ID. Additionally, legislation approved earlier in June requires the establishment of a national messaging platform by 2026 to replace foreign applications for official and public use.
AppWizard
July 3, 2025
A sophisticated Android malware campaign named Qwizzserial has emerged as a significant threat to banking security in Central Asia, particularly affecting users in Uzbekistan. Initially identified in mid-2024, it disguises itself as legitimate applications to deceive users into installation. Analysts from Group-IB uncovered it, noting its distribution network resembles the Classiscam fraud infrastructure. The campaign has reportedly infected around 100,000 users, resulting in financial losses exceeding ,000 within three months. The primary distribution channel is Telegram, where cybercriminals pose as government entities. Qwizzserial requests critical permissions upon installation and collects personal and financial information, systematically harvesting existing SMS messages. Recent iterations have incorporated obfuscation techniques and enhanced persistence mechanisms.
Winsage
July 2, 2025
Microsoft announced that Windows is now running on just over 1 billion devices globally, a decrease from the previously claimed 1.4 billion devices. This suggests that as many as 400 million PCs may no longer be using Windows, indicating a potential decline in market share since the launch of Windows 11 three years ago. Windows has reportedly lost approximately 15% of its market share since 2015. Windows 10 is approaching its end of support, and Windows 11 is expected to become the most widely used desktop operating system within the next year. There are concerns about Windows 11's stagnation and perceptions of it pushing users towards Microsoft services.
AppWizard
June 27, 2025
Amazon has begun blocking several streaming applications on its Fire TV platform that promote unauthorized access to DRM-protected content, including Blink Streamz, Flix Vision, Live NetTV, and Ocean Streamz. Users attempting to open or sideload these apps receive a warning message indicating potential risks to device functionality and personal data, with the option to Keep the app grayed out. Although the Fire TV does not automatically delete these applications, the uncertainty about their future functionality is frustrating for users. Reports suggest that some blocked apps may harbor malware, with Flix Vision specifically exploiting device resources. Amazon has not publicly detailed the reasons for blocking these apps. Analysts have criticized Amazon for allowing piracy to proliferate, and Sky has accused the company of failing to curb illegal streaming activities, claiming that over half of the Fire TV devices sold in the UK are illegal jailbroken units.
Winsage
June 25, 2025
Microsoft Corporation unveiled a small language model named Mu on June 23, designed for local operation on personal computers, particularly Copilot+ PCs. Mu is a 330 million parameter encoder-decoder language model optimized for deployment on Neural Processing Units (NPUs), allowing for quick responses with reduced power consumption and memory usage. It was pre-trained on a dataset of hundreds of billions of educational tokens and employs advanced fine-tuning techniques, including distillation and low-rank adaptation, along with transformer enhancements like Dual LayerNorm, Rotary Positional Embeddings, and Grouped-Query Attention. Users will access Mu's capabilities through the Windows operating system's Settings function, translating natural language inputs into system commands.
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