Microsoft Signs Another Call of Duty Deal In Bid To Impress Regulators

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft announced Tuesday that it has signed a 10-year deal to bring its Xbox PC games to little-known Ukraine-based streaming platform Boosteroid. The move is being positioned in part to "mak[e] even more clear to regulators that our acquisition of Activision Blizzard will make Call of Duty available on far more devices than before," as Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith said in a statement. "If the only argument is that Microsoft is going to withhold Call of Duty from other platforms, and we've now entered into contracts that are going to bring this to many more devices and many more platforms, that is a pretty hard case to make to a court," Smith told The Wall Street Journal.

Started in 2017, Boosteroid boasts 4 million streaming customers using servers based in nine European countries and six US states. Those customers pay 7.50 euro per month to stream games from those servers to any smartphone, Windows/Mac/Linux-based PC, or Android TV device. Boosteroid currently links to users' accounts on other PC-based platforms -- including Steam, the Epic Games Store, Blizzard's Battle.net, EA's Origin, the Rockstar Game Launcher, and Wargaming -- and lets them play games from those services without having to install them on a local gaming PC. With this new deal, that access will expand to include games available through Microsoft's Xbox app on the PC.

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nmap -sV --script vuln -p- <target-network>

tail -f /var/log/suricata/fast.log | grep <cve>

Check Vendor Security Advisory Bulletin

title: Detect Exploitation - Microsoft Signs Another Call of Duty Deal In Bid To Impress Regulators
id: c5a40bfd-7787-4a59-884d-47e5ae523c4c
status: experimental
description: Automatisch generierte SIEM-Erkennungsregel basierend auf CTI Intelligence
references:
  - https://tsecurity.de/
author: iShareStuff CTI Automated Detection Engine
date: 2026-09-27
logsource:
  category: network_connection
  product: any
detection:
  selection:
      CommandLine|contains:
        - 'exploit'
  condition: selection
falsepositives:
  - Legitime administrative Zugriffe oder Penetrationstests
level: high
tags:
  - attack.initial_access

rule CTI_Threat_Indicator {
    meta:
        author = "iShareStuff CTI Automated Detection Engine"
        date = "2026-09-27"
        description = "YARA Signature for "
    strings:
        $str = "Microsoft Signs Another Call o" ascii wide
    condition:
        any of them
}

index=security sourcetype IN ("cisco:asa", "pan:traffic", "zeek_conn", "suricata", "WinEventLog:Security")
("Microsoft Signs Another Call of Duty Dea")
| stats count earliest(_time) as first_seen latest(_time) as last_seen by src_ip, dest_ip, dest_host, signature
| eval first_seen=strftime(first_seen, "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"), last_seen=strftime(last_seen, "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
| sort - count

message: "*Microsoft Signs Another Call of Duty Dea*"

CommonSecurityLog
| where Message has "Microsoft Signs Another Call of Duty Dea"
| summarize EventCount = count(), FirstSeen = min(TimeGenerated), LastSeen = max(TimeGenerated) by SourceIP, DestinationIP, DestinationPort, Activity
| extend DetectionRule = "iShareStuff-CTI-Compiled"
| sort by EventCount desc