Iranian Cyber Army, an anti-American group, hacked Twitter, a micro-blogging site, last week. The shut down lasted for more than an hour. During that time, visitors of Twitter redirected automatically to another site which shows a green flag with English and Arabic writing stating:
“This site has been hacked by the Iranian Cyber Army.”

The said Iranian protesters stated that they control and manage internet access with their power and not USA alone as what they thought, so Americans should not provoke the Iranian people.
Dync Inc., a company based in New Hampshire that directs that traffic for Twitter, said that the hackers got credentials to redirect Twitter’s traffic to a bogus site. TechCrunch reported that the said disruption also affected Google searches for Twitter. Twitter’s DNS have been fixed after being temporarily compromised with the said group.

According to Twitter’s co-founder, Biz Stone, they will update with more information after they have done the investigation. Many speculated that the said cyber attack was the revenge to the Twitter’s role in the election protests earlier this year. Iranians used Twitter to express their protest against what they believed to be an unfair result of the election last June but the U. S. State Department advised Twitter to delay maintenance interrupting the site’s service during the peak of demonstrations.

How Can Techie Now Help?

Millions of people has been using Twitter every day to communicate and express what they feel. The Iranians used it to speak out during the election and the Iranian Cyber Army has hacked it to revenge and deface the site but not the users. It’s the same as hacking a computer. If you want your PC to be protected, Techie Now is available to provide PC support services: virus and spyware removal, performance optimization, installation and configuration, and general repair. Techie Now can definitely give what your PC needs.

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Six months after Bing search engine was first shown as a beta, Microsoft officially launched the UK localized of Bing last November 13, 2009. The time has come for Bing to be taken out of beta because UK was really happy on its performance.

Microsoft’s search engine changes over the years, from MSN Search, Windows Live Search, Live Search and lastly Bing. Google was persistently creating a name of its own during the time that Bing is coming up with a name. Google really become part of the people’s everyday lives. Microsoft know that Bing is not going to overthrow Google search engine but they want to try the chance of putting itself in there because any percentage increase in search margin is worth a huge amount in advertising revenue. And then it is better if Bing will help to slow down Google.

Marie Thirlwall, one of Bing’s UK product managers, told IT PRO that it would be great if Bing could get to number two. Bing may not reach its verb status but at least many are aware now of the word “Bing”.

So, Bing is out of beta now. Most people use Google as their default engine in the search bar located at the top right of their browser. If you want to add Bing to Firefox, it’s easy to do. You just have to install this add-on.

Many people like Bing because of its homepage design. You can choose an image from its archive of images via arrows at the bottom right. These images overlays with hotspots which when clicked will redirect you to interesting links, images and videos about the subject of the picture. According to Microsoft, they refer Bing as more of a decision engine than a search engine. You will see an explorer bar down the side of all searches where you’ll find related searches or search refinements making things more convenient to you.

Bing’s image search remains a highlight since its first release. It has larger default images compared to Google showing further details when you roll over an image. The filters for the images, such as large and small can be seen on the lower side. In fact, Google also has the same options where you need to click the “Show options” at the top to filter the image it’s more clearly shown in Bing. With Bing, you can use infinite scroll features to see more choices of images compared to Google that you still need to click the “Next” button to see more results. Bing videos is modernized with videos that play automatically when you scroll over them. It is really impressive because videos don’t lag. Videos are filtered according to length, aspect ratio, resolution and size.

Bing maps have undergone some changes. All its data is co-located around the world. There are some changes made in the Bing maps interface. It’s now easier to reorder saved push pins and different points on a plotted route could now be grabbed and moved which is also available in Google maps. Users can now embed Bing maps in web pages. Educational institutions and non-profit organizations could now use it for free but limited to 125,000 sessions. Business and location searches in here are separated out. Bing maps also offers another feature, a “Bird’s Eye” view, which is actually an angled, ‘isometric’ view. Compared to Google’s Street View, it looks nice but it isn’t that helpful in identifying where you’re going unless you plan to travel by micro-light.

Bing shopping is an area that Microsoft worked for to make it perfect for the UK. It has it has now fully included the “Ciao!” comparison engine into Bing itself. The layout is still confusing. You will appreciate “Reviews” tab on the left as this is something we often want when looking for products. With Bing, much of the promised UK localization works well. It is nice to know that it gives slightly more detail than Google. It also deals with businesses. Another great feature is visual search. It is designed to know exactly what you’re looking for by name. Just type the word you are searching and it will display a gallery of images for you to browse. It is a helpful feature although it’s only limited to what Bing can provide with only five options available.

Bing also has other primary features: the Twitter and Wolfram Alpha integration. Visit Open www.bing.com/twitter where you will find topics with some Tweets. You can also search anyone’s Tweets by typing the person’s Twitter name. Wolfram Alpha searches are also now live in the UK and will only work on calculations that it knows to explicitly send to the Wolfram Alpha database, but at least Bing can now keep pace with Google for integrated calculations.

Microsoft has created Bing on usability, accuracy and speed, and taken it out of beta. It knows that Bing does as well as Google. Others might find it easier and more satisfying to use compared to Google.

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Trend Micro’s threat research revealed that Koobface botnet is abusing Google Reader by spamming URLS redirecting Internet users to infected websites through Youtube.

Google Reader is a Google-owned free service allowing users to monitor and share websites for new content. Koobface has been spamming URLs on social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace and Twitter. Koobface is spamming Google Reader now. A Google account is made and controlled by Koobface gang, hosting a page with a fake YouTube video. As the victim clicks the fake video, it will redirect to a compromised website, which also hosts another fake YouTube video. The user will be infected and becomes part of the Koobface botnet. Attackers use Google Reader’s to share links and messages between users to host an image resembling a Flash video. When the user tries to view the video, it will redirect to a fake YouTube page containing a video. As in previous attacks, the user was soon prompted with an alert that invited them to upgrade their Flash player. Hidden was the fact that instead of the updated software, the user was downloading the Koobface downloader component that would that take over the victim’s computer.

Trend Micro, the IT security vendor, has reported Koobface to Google for spamming more than 1300 known and unique fake Google Reader accounts. Nowadays, cybercriminals take advantage of Google because of its credibility that they hide malicious links behind Google Reader.

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ScanSafe researchers see a renewed activity of Gumblar. It has crashed thousands of websites and blogs like Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla and other PHP platforms. Gumblar is a multifunctional malware that spread through attacking PCs while visiting hacked Web pages. It can steal FTP (File Transfer Protocol) credentials and also hijack Google searches which replace results on infected computers with links to other malicious sites. Gumblar malware was first seen last May 2009.

The backdoor script being used to infect legitimate websites has been causing crash to some Wordpress blogs and other PHP-based sites. Websites infected with Gumblar contain an iframe – a way to bring content from one web site into another. Those iframes are made invisible by the malware writers. If the victim visits the site, the iframe will start a series of exploits hosted on a remote computer to try and hack the visiting machine.
Gumblar checks to see if the victim’s PC is running unpatched versions of Adobe Systems’ Reader and Acrobat programs. If so, the machine will be compromised by a so-called drive-by download. In this way, Gumblar will infect visitors with variety of online attacks. Users experience error messages while using Wordpress and other PHP-based sites which are generated because of a bug in the Gumblar’s malicious code injected in the sites warning the site owners that their site is infected.

Usually, domain names that have been used for malicious purposes are being suspended by domain name registrars. Like what happened to gumbler.cn, where Gumblar got its name, the time that it came out in May of this year. Since those domains are blacklisted, malware writers usually change domains their software looks to for instructions. But for some reason, the gumblar.cn domain was now released and is in use again. The botnet will begin infecting computers again.

Dennis Sinegubko, independent security researcher, discovered that it was really Gumblar’s fault. The authors made some changes to their web code resulting to the current version of Gumblar damaging Wordpress blogs and other websites.

According to Landesman, web sites that are still infected with Gumblar can now call back to the newly activated domain allowing those infected PCs to be updated with new malware.

How Can Techie Now Help?

Gumblar is active again! Gumblar has crashed thousands of blogs and websites like Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla and other PHP-based sites. It can attack your PC and steals personal information from you. Protect your PC now before any online attacks like Gumblar do the damage, contact Techie Now. We can provide the PC support services you need – virus and spyware removal, performance optimization, installation and configuration, and general repair. Worry no more, Techie Now can help you secure your PC.

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Twitter is being used by many people worldwide in these days. It’s a free social networking and micro-blogging service enabling its users to read and send messages. Because of its increasing popularity, Twitter has exerted its effort to stop attacks which includes spam, worms such as Mikeyy, and phishing. Twitter confirmed that the site was hacked last May where some individual account information were also leaked.

In regards to this, Kaspersky revealed a new tool named “Krab Krawler”. It will analyze million of tweets posted on Twitter every day and will block any Malware associated with them.

Krab Krawler will:

• looks at every public post as it appears in on Twitter
• extracts any URLs in them and analyzes the web page they go to
• expands any URLs that have been shortened

Twitter scans almost 500,000 new unique URLs every day where there are about 100 to 1,000 Malware attacks happen. Koobface virus has targeted Twitter by posting malicious links from infected users’ accounts. Twenty-six (26) percent of the total Twitter posts contain URLs redirecting to spam sites which are marketing products or services and not considered Malware. Thousands of accounts post spam links created by bots. Most of the URLs redirect to online dating sites.

Kaspersky’s regular antivirus software can detect and block ninety-five (95) percent of the Malware Twitter users are afraid of. Some antivirus companies focus protecting e-mail-borne viruses but also give more attention to social-media sites now. For now, Finjan offers SecureTweets to Twitter users. SecureTweets is a  free browser plug-in that warns the users as they come upon a malicious URL in Twitter, also includes Blogger, Gmail, Google search, MSN, MySpace, Yahoo and more sites.

Attackers are fond of hitting social-media sites because there are many people using them and trusting messages in there with their friends more than they do in e-mails. According to Kaspersky, Trojan-Clicker.HTMLIFrame is the most common piece of Malware associated with Twitter. It is a malicious Javascript that can be transferred to computer when you visit a compromised web site.

How Can Techie Now Help?

If your PC gets infected while using Twitter and you need help, feel free to contact Techie Now. Our virus removal services will be the solution you are looking for. We offer better services at a lower price. With Techie Now, your PC is at good hands.

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