Enlarge / They look like normal notifications, but opening an iPhone with one or more of these stacked up, you won't be able to do much of anything until you tap "Allow" or "Don't Allow." And they're right next to each other. (credit: Kevin Purdy)

Human weaknesses are a rich target for phishing attacks. Making humans click "Don't Allow" over and over again in a phone prompt that can't be skipped is an angle some iCloud attackers are taking—and likely having some success.

Brian Krebs' at Krebs on Security detailed the attacks in a recent post, noting that "MFA Fatigue Attacks" are a known attack strategy. By repeatedly hitting a potential victim's device with multifactor authentication requests, the attack fills a device's screen with prompts that typically have yes/no options, often very close together. Apple's devices are just the latest rich target for this technique.

Both the Kremlin-backed Fancy Bear advanced persistent threat group and a rag-tag bunch of teenagers known as Lapsus$ have been known to use the technique, also known as MFA prompt bombing, successfully.

Enlarge / Apple's App Store. (credit: Silas Stein/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Mobile app developers are expected to push subscriptions more aggressively over the next year. Numbers that RevenueCat recently shared examining over 30,000 apps suggest why: Most apps struggle to reach $1,000 per month in revenue.

RevenueCat makes a subscription toolkit for mobile apps. The 7-year-old company's study shared today, as spotted by TechCrunch, said the firm examined apps using its in-app subscription SDKs. RevenueCat's report didn't list all apps studied but claims Reuters, Buffer, Goodnotes, PhotoRoom, and Notion as customers. The report claims that 90 percent of apps with an in-app-subscription platform use RevenueCat. The San Francisco-based company also claims to support "everything from niche indie apps to several of the top 100 subscription apps," which notably suggests that most of the top-100 subscription apps aren't included in this study.

With these caveats in mind, the 120-page report still provides unique details about a claimed $6.7 billion in subscription revenue touching over 18,000 developers and 290 million subscribers using the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

More than 70,000 AT&T cellular customers reported being unable to connect to service early Thursday morning. While early reports suggested multiple carriers, including Verizon and T-Mobile, seemed to be affected, that appears to be a knock-on effect of a major network going down.

As of late Thursday morning, AT&T had told CNN Business that most of its network had been restored. The Federal Communications Commission, along with other federal agencies, have been in touch with AT&T about the outage, according to CNN.

Service monitoring site Downdetector was showing multiple post-paid and pre-paid carriers as having increased outage reports starting at around 4 am Eastern time. An Ars editor in Texas has seen "SOS" on their iPhone since 4:30 am ET and has been unable to make Wi-Fi calls.

Enlarge / Artist's rendition of two Elden Ring teams, The Medium and The Message, battling it out in a colosseum constructed from micro-transactions and overseen by mystical creatures known as Whales. (credit: Bandai Namco)

To its fans, Elden Ring is a noble struggle, where the effort you put into memorizing boss patterns, improving your build, and fine-tuning your reactions offsets your near-constant deaths in a grim, unforgiving landscape.

To Tencent, it seems, Elden Ring is an opportunity to create another free-to-play game, one flush with in-app purchases and booster packs that may not mesh at all with the game's nature or setting.

Reuters reports that Tencent, the Chinese firm that owns a 16 percent stake in Elden Ring and Dark Souls-maker FromSoftware, has a mobile version of Elden Ring in development. Progress "has been slow," according to three people familiar with the project cited by Reuters. But it will be free-to-play, will have in-app purchases, and may resemble miHoYo's Genshin Impact in its play/pay flow, according to Reuters.

Enlarge (credit: Wong Yu Liang | Moment)

The US may have uncovered the nation's largest "SIM swap" scheme yet, charging a Chicago man and co-conspirators with allegedly stealing $400 million in cryptocurrency by targeting over 50 victims in more than a dozen states, including one company.

A recent indictment alleged that Robert Powell—using online monikers "R," "R$," and "ElSwapo1"—was the "head of a SIM swapping group" called the “Powell SIM Swapping Crew.” He allegedly conspired with Indiana man Carter Rohn (aka "Carti" and "Punslayer") and Colorado woman Emily Hernandez (allegedly aka "Em") to gain access to victims' devices and "carry out fraudulent SIM swap attacks" between March 2021 and April 2023.

SIM-swap attacks occur when someone fraudulently induces a wireless carrier to "reassign a cell phone number from the legitimate subscriber or user’s SIM card to a SIM card controlled by a criminal actor," the indictment said. Once the swap occurs, the bad actor can defeat multi-factor authentication protections and access online accounts to steal data or money.

Enlarge / Illustration of AST SpaceMobile's cellular satellite. (credit: AST SpaceMobile)

Google, AT&T, and Vodafone are investing $206.5 million in AST SpaceMobile, a Starlink competitor that plans to offer smartphone service from low-Earth-orbit satellites.

This is the first investment in AST SpaceMobile from Google and AT&T, while Vodafone had already put money into the satellite company. AST SpaceMobile announced the funding in a press release on Thursday and announced a $100 million public offering of its stock on the same day.

"Vodafone and AT&T have placed purchase orders for network equipment from AST SpaceMobile to support planned commercial service," the satellite company said. Google has meanwhile "agreed to collaborate on product development, testing, and implementation plans for SpaceMobile network connectivity on Android and related devices." AST, which has one very large test satellite in orbit, previously received investments from Rakuten, American Tower, and Bell Canada.

Enlarge / Can you master the ornate physics and inscrutable game theory necessary to overcome this challenge? (credit: D3Publisher)

You've seen them. If you've tried to read almost anything on the Internet, especially on a social media site, you know these mobile game advertisements.

"Many failed before! Think you can do better?" one reads, positioned over an auto-playing video of a simple puzzle played by an unseen, incredibly stupid hand. It pulls the wrong pin, melting the gold and drowning the king. Or it can't do elementary math, so it sends a "10" fighter to its death against a "13" creature, ignoring the "8" it could have picked to add up to 18. Sometimes, there are colored liquids in tubes to be poured, and they are selected with an almost elegant idiocy.

They're infuriating, but you know they work, because these ads keep showing up. If you actually downloaded these games, you'd discover they were stuffed with pop-up ads, relentlessly barking micro-transactions, or they're some unrelated and cynically monetized game entirely. What if you could actually play the original bait games for a reasonable one-time fee, crafted by a developer who was in on the joke?

Enlarge / Starlink satellites with direct-to-cell capability. (credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX is showing off the first text messages sent between T-Mobile phones via one of Starlink's low Earth orbit satellites. "On Monday, January 8, the Starlink team successfully sent and received our first text messages using T-Mobile network spectrum through one of our new Direct to Cell satellites launched six days prior," a Starlink update said.

SpaceX last week launched the first six Starlink satellites that can provide cellular transmissions to standard LTE phones. The service from what Starlink calls "cellphone towers in space" is expected to provide text messaging sometime this year for customers of T-Mobile in the US and carriers in other countries, with voice and data service beginning sometime in 2025.

SpaceX posted a photo of the two iPhones that exchanged the texts, which included messages such as "Such signal" and "Much wow." The process that allowed those texts to be sent was pretty complicated, Starlink said.

Enlarge / Starlink satellites with direct-to-cell capability. (credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX last night launched the first six Starlink satellites that will provide cellular transmissions for customers of T-Mobile and other carriers.

SpaceX said it launched 21 satellites overall, including "the first six Starlink satellites with Direct to Cell capabilities that enable mobile network operators around the world to provide seamless global access to texting, calling, and browsing wherever you may be on land, lakes, or coastal waters without changing hardware or firmware. The enhanced Starlink satellites have an advanced modem that acts as a cellphone tower in space, eliminating dead zones with network integration similar to a standard roaming partner," the company said.

Besides T-Mobile in the US, several carriers in other countries have signed up to use the direct-to-cell satellites. SpaceX said the other carriers are Rogers in Canada, KDDI in Japan, Optus in Australia, One NZ in New Zealand, Salt in Switzerland, and Entel in Chile and Peru.

Apple's AAA gaming ambitions for the iPhone 15 Pro saw both a release and a delay this week.

When Apple unveiled the iPhone 15 Pro and touted its AAA gaming capabilities in September, the company named three upcoming games as showcases: the Resident Evil 4 remake, Death Stranding, and Assassin's Creed Mirage. All would arrive to iOS and all would require an iPhone 15 Pro to play.

Resident Evil 4 launched on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS today. And a few days ago, publisher 505 Games announced in a post to X that Death Stranding—which was expected to launch this month—has been delayed to "a new release date in early 2024" because it "needs a little more time."

Enlarge / The enhanced edition trilogy includes Grand Theft Auto 3, Grand Theft Auto Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. (credit: Rockstar Games)

Netflix subscribers will be able to play the three original 3D Grand Theft Auto games on iOS and Android starting in December, according to a blog post from the streamer.

The titles included are 2001's Grand Theft Auto III, 2002's Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and 2004's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

All three released initially on the PS2 and Xbox. The first 3D entry in the series, Grand Theft Auto III, was a crossover cultural sensation when it debuted, and it is credited as one of the main originators of the open-world genre, which remains one of the most popular genres in triple-A games to this day.

Enlarge / Resident Evil Village runs just well enough on the iPhone 15 Pro Max. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Look, if you're going to play AAA and core games, you probably want to play on a gaming PC or a console. Let's just get that right out of the way.

That said, Apple was trying to sell the potential of triple-A gaming on the iPhone 15 Pro this fall, and it's not impossible to imagine.

A small selection of titles, including Resident Evil 4, Death Stranding, and Assassin's Creed Mirage, are planned for the device. There's some question as to whether battery life and thermal realities will make this practical, but the buzz has been enough that people have been asking me about it—including some friends, significant others, and parents to gamers who are doing some holiday shopping and want to make sure they get the right phone for their person.

Enlarge / Behold, a collection of apps we love. (credit: Oscar Wong / Getty Images)

Senior Reviews Editor Samuel Axon

Todoist basically runs my life—but that's OK, because it's a very well-designed app. There are a ton of to-do apps on the iPhone, but I went with this one because it's very flexible.

For example, yeah, you can see a top-to-bottom to-do list like with many others, but you can view that same data as a Trello-like Kanban board, too.

I've also found that Todoist is better at understanding natural language settings for projects, times, and so on than a lot of other to-do apps, so, for example, I can type "Edit next article at 2 pm on Tuesday #ArsTechnica" to add a to-do within the Ars Technica project with a due time of 2 pm on the following Tuesday. A lot of to-do apps support that, but I feel Todoist does it best.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

It was a proto-netbook. It was a palmtop. It was a PDA. It was Windows Phone 7 but not Windows Phone 8, and then it was an embedded ghost. Its parents never seemed to know what to do with it after it grew up, beyond offer it up for anybody to shape in their own image. And then, earlier this month, with little notice, Windows CE was no more, at least as a supported operating system. Windows Embedded Compact 2013, or sometimes Windows CE 8.0, reached end of support on October 10, 2023, as noted by The Register.

Windows CE, which had a name that didn't stand for anything and was sometimes rendered as "wince," is not survived by anything, really. Remembrances have been offered by every Microsoft CEO since its inception and one former Ars writer. A public service for the operating system will be held in the comments.

The OS that fit in small spaces

Windows CE was initially Microsoft Pegasus, a team working to create a very low-power MIPS or SuperH-based reference platform for manufacturers making the smallest computers with keyboards you could make back then. Devices like the NEC MobilePro 200, Casio (Cassiopeia) A-10, and HP 300LX started appearing in late 1996 and early 1997, with tiny keyboards, more-landscape-than-landscape displays, and, by modern standards, an impressive number of ports.

Enlarge / A T-Mobile store on August 24, 2023 in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Anna Moneymaker)

T-Mobile has scrapped a plan to automatically switch users to newer, more expensive packages after hearing loads of criticism from customers.

The plan became public knowledge two weeks ago with the leak of internal documents that said customers would be switched to pricier tiers starting with the November bill cycle unless they contacted T-Mobile to opt out. Documents showed that T-Mobile customer service reps were trained to tell users who complained, "We are not raising the price of any of our plans; we are moving you to a newer plan with more benefits at a different cost."

But in an earnings call yesterday (see transcript), T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said it's no longer happening because feedback from angry subscribers showed it "isn't something that our customers are going to love."

Enlarge / A push for more IronSource customers may have been a major motivation behind Unity's controversial install-fee proposals (credit: Unity)

It's been over a month now since Unity partially backtracked on its controversial proposed "pay per install" fee structure, a trust-destroying saga that seems to have contributed to the retirement of Unity CEO John Riccitiello. Now, a new report highlights some of the internal divisions over the "rushed-out" policy introduction and provides new insight into what may have been motivating the company to even attempt such a plan.

Business-focused site MobileGamer.biz cites multiple "sources from inside Unity and across the mobile games business" in reporting that Unity received some significant pushback from senior-level managers before rolling out its initial fee-restructuring plans. "Half of the people in that meeting said that this model is too complicated, it’s not going to be well-received, and we should talk to people before we do this," one anonymous source told the site. "It felt very rushed. We had this meeting and were told it was happening, but we were not told a date. And then before we knew it, it was out there."

After the negative reaction to that initial plan, Unity reportedly considered a modification that would take up to 4 percent of revenue from the largest Unity publishers—slightly under the 5 percent charged by the Unreal Engine. The final policy knocked that cap down to 2.5 percent only after the extent of the backlash became clear.

Enlarge / A T-Mobile store on April 3, 2020, in Zutphen, Netherlands.

T-Mobile is moving people to newer, more expensive plans starting with the November bill cycle unless customers call the company to opt out, according to multiple reports.

The forced migration surfaced on Reddit two days ago and was confirmed by The Mobile Report, which published portions of leaked documents indicating how the plan changes will be implemented. T-Mobile also confirmed the change to CNET, telling the news site that "there will be an increase of approximately $10 per line with the migration."

"We're always looking for ways to give our customers more from our services so we're moving a small number who were on older rate plans to newer plans that will deliver them enhanced features," T-Mobile told CNET.