Hasta La Gadget!

This week the Botnet known as Bamital has been reported dead by the two warriors that claim to have killed it: Symantec and Microsoft. This report shows that the death of said botnet will take down its abilities in full: hijacking search results galore being the main evil this Bamital creature was working with. Each time a user in the line of fire searched for something using search engines from whens they’d be sent to a malicious 3rd party site, having malware installed from that point.

Microsoft has made it clear that their research pushes Bamital far beyond the average malicious attack on the public. What they’ve found suggests that a whopping 8 million computers had been affected by Bamital over the past two years alone, including many of the most major search engines. If you’d been using Microsoft’s Bing, Yahoo, Google, or a variety of other smaller engines over the past two years, Microsoft and Symantec are saying this week that you were at risk – but that you aren’t any longer.

That said, there are still users out there with the malware already on their computers. For those folks, Microsoft has provided their Virus and Security Solution Center for remote help. This is a continuation of what Microsoft calls their MARS initiative, aka Microsoft Active Response for Security.

The other big name you’ll want to know if you’re tracking such things is Operation b58. This code-name is the one associated with Symantec and Microsoft taking down Bamital, and is the sixth “botnet disruption operation” Microsoft has initiated in three years. That’s a whole ‘lotta botnet bunker busting! And it’s not just about sitting at home and keying in to the malware tossers from afar – Microsoft has provided photos of, for example, Microsoft DCU’s Richard Boscovich and Craig Schmidt working with a “third-party cyberforensics expert” securing a lovely collection of evidence of the Bamital botnet down in New Jersey at a web-hosting facility that will remain nameless (that’s the image you’re seeing above).

The image you see above with the yellow dot web sort of graphic is what Microsoft describes as Figure 28. This map was included in a legal declaration filed by Microsoft DCU’s Craig Schmidt (also pictured above) in Operation b58. It shows what happens when a computer infected with Bamital sees when they search in Bing for the word Chrome – ads, ads, and more ads. Fun stuff!

[via Microsoft]

Bamital Botnet destroyed: Microsoft, Symantec victorious is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you thought the Wall Street Journal only announced that it had been infiltrated by Chinese hackers once the debacle was over—think again. Rupert Murdoch has tweeted that the newspaper is still coming under sustained attack. More »

Yesterday, the iOS 6.1 jailbreak officially released to the public, and it essentially was a scramble for millions of iOS 6 users, similar to how someone announces there’s free food in the break room, and everyone dashes in to get their share. It turns out that the release saw a huge wave of users join in on the jailbreaking fun, and even Cydia became overloaded, resulting in errors that left users without tweaks for now.

Developer pod2g posted up some traffic statistics of evasi0n.com, the website hosting the iOS 6 jailbreak, and the numbers are staggering. As of earlier today, the website has seen almost three million unique visitors, with page views exceeding 17.3 million. These figures don’t even include yesterday’s or today’s statistics, which we guarantee are even more staggering.

Of course, after jailbreaking, users pretty much had no where to go since Cydia was slowing down due to the surge of users downloading various tweaks. Many users would get errors in the app and weren’t able to browse or download tweaks. Jay Freeman, the man behind Cydia, says that he saw a peak of 14,000 hits per second, which is definitely unfathomable.

However, it’ll only be a matter of time before order comes to chaos, so if you’re still trying to get into the Cydia store, you’ll have to be patient. Of course, no one knows exactly when things will start to settle down, but we’re guessing that within the next few days when the initial rush dies down, you’ll be able to dive in finally.

iOS 6.1 jailbreak sees massive numbers, Cydia usage spikes is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We hope you prepared, folks, because the long-awaited untethered jailbreak for iOS 6.1 devices is finally here. It’s been a long time coming since the last time we saw a proper jailbreak, but thanks to the Evad3rs dev team, including PlanetBeing, pod2g, and MuscleNerd, it’s great to know that the latest iOS firmware is now hackable.

There’s a few things you’ll need before you get started. You obviously should have done most of the pre-jailbreak work already, but if not, be sure to read our guide on how to prepare for the jailbreak. You’ll need a computer running at least Windows XP, OS X 10.5, or Linux x86/x86_64. Luckily, the jailbreak will work with both iOS 6.0 and iOS 6.1, so no need to upgrade to iOS 6.1 if you haven’t already.

You’ll also want to disable your passcode lock if you have one, as the dev team has warned that can interfere with the jailbreaking process. Once you’re ready, head on over the Evasi0n website to download the necessary files that you need. The website does a good job directing you to all the files that you need.

Make sure to be patient while the jailbreak process is running. The dev team says it should only take about five minutes, but they insist that you don’t open up iTunes or Xcode while the process is running. The best thing to do is to just not touch your computer at all until the end of the jailbreaking process.

iOS 6.1 untethered jailbreak now available is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It’s one thing when malware attacks your phone, but it’s another when that same malware hops over to your PC and then uses it to listen in on all your conversations on top of just messing with your phone. A newly discovered Android app—one that’s in the Google Play store—can do just that. Beware. More »