Twitter hacked by Iranian Cyber Army

Iranian Cyber Army claims to control and manage internet by their power by wiping out Twitter Thursday

Paige Maynard

Around 10 p.m. Thursday evening, Twitter users logged in to the Web site to find an unusual message from the Iranian Cyber Army claiming that they, not the U.S., controlled and managed the internet.
Techcrunch has the full message, if you want to read the bizarre rantings of the ICA.
The Iranian Cyber Army apparently not only hacked in to Twitter, but also Mowjcamp. The company updated its status blog after the hack saying, “Twitter’s DNS records were temporarily compromised but have now been fixed. We are looking into the underlying cause and will update with more information soon.”
Twitter managed to get back up, but the other Web site is still affected. The microblogging service issued a warning to all their users saying that if you use the same password for your Twitter as you do with other websites, now may be a good time to change it.
So why did the Iranian Cyber Army target Twitter? Let’s let TechCrunch take over:

“There is a history between Iran and Twitter. It was well noted and covered in the media that Twitter was used as a tool during the Iranian election protests. The US government actually intervened to assure that Twitter was available to the protesters in Tehran and around the country. This attack may be an act of reprisal from groups who were not happy with the role that Twitter played during the protests.”.
Not to mention the fact that the Internet helped spread footage of protester Neda Agha-Soltan being shot and killed, an event which helped mobilize Iranian election protesters.
With the maneuver of the Iranian Cyber Army, Twitter finds itself once again being no stranger to hacking. Nearly two months ago their web servers were misconfigured to reveal internal network information. And let’s not forget about french man Hacker Croll stealing over 300 confidential Twitter documents and sending them to various websites to publish.
It is unclear who the Iranian Cyber Army is at this time or if they are actually the responsible party behind this Twitter hacking.
So it seems like Twitter still has some kinks to work out when it comes to protecting their databases and passwords. May we suggest calling up Mark Zuckerberg? He claims to know a thing or two about privacy settings. 

How to Remove Kido / Conficker / Downadup / Downup Worm?

Symptoms to check if your computer is infected with this:

* Show all hidden files and folders are not working
* Can’t access anti-virus websites like: Bitdefender.com Symantec.com, and patch sites like Microsoft.
* The existence of a file named: jwgkvsq.vmx inside the RECYCLED folder.
* Creates autorun.inf files on USB devices plugged in an infected machine. Also other viruses does this.
* Account lockout policies being reset automatically.
* Certain Microsoft Windows services such as Automatic Updates, Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS), Windows Defender and Error Reporting Services are automatically disabled.
* Domain controllers respond slowly to client requests.
* System network gets unusually congested. This can be checked with network traffic chart on Windows Task Manager.
* Launches a brute force dictionary attack against administrator passwords to help it spread through ADMIN$ shares, making choice of sensible passwords advisable.

Remove the virus:
Some of the well-known security companies came up with tools for removing the Conficker/Downandup worm virus. Removal tools can be freely downloaded from any of the following security sites:

* Microsoft
* BitDefender
* ESET
* Symantec
* Sophos
* Kaspersky
* McAfee Anti-virus with updated detections can remove this by scanning your system.
* AVG can also remove it via system scan, if you have it installed and updated.

How to remove the Conficker/Downandup worm virus?

1. Download Conficker/Downandup removal tools from the given sites above.
2. Disconnect from the internet, and remove any network cables at the back of your PC/laptop, and also remove any plugged-in USB devices.
3. Login as Administrator on your computer, or any account that has administrator privileges.
4. Run the removal tool. My recommendation is to use the removal tools from BitDefender (quick scan) and Symantec (thorough scan). But if you are not content, just run all the removal tools for greater detection.Simple-case: The removal tool will detect and remove the Conficker worm and ‘may’ require that you restart your computer.
Extreme-case: The removal tool won’t run because the virus is preventing it from running. Quick solution:
1. Open task manager (CTRL+ATL+DEL)
2. Terminate (End) the process with these names: explorer.exe and svchost.exe
3. A countdown timer will appear requiring you to restart your computer. DO NOT DO ANYTHING AT THIS POINT EXCEPT… Immediately run the BitDefender Tool (quick scan) so that it will remove the virus before your computer restarts.
4. If the tool won’t still run, ‘end process’ all the svchost.exe and try running the removal tool again.

It only affects Windows system that aren’t patched with the latest update. Run autoupdate and patch your Windows. It is critical that these patches be installed:
Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-067 – Critical
Vulnerability in Server Service Could Allow Remote Code Execution (958644)
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/securit...8-067.mspx (download for XP)
Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-068 – Important
Vulnerability in SMB Could Allow Remote Code Execution (957097)
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/securit...8-068.mspx (download for XP)
Microsoft Security Bulletin MS09-001 – Critical
Vulnerabilities in SMB Could Allow Remote Code Execution (958687)
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/securit...9-001.mspx (download for XP)
For manual download of patches for Windows XP and Vista go to http://www.softwarepatch.com/windows/

How To Kill Unresponsive Programs without The Task Manager

Windows is generally not known for its stability. Among other things there are frequent “Not Responding” applications. The reasons may vary from less RAM to Viruses to poorly designed applications. So what do you do when an application hangs up?

I bet you hit Ctrl+Alt+Del or fire up the task manager in some other way, reach for the application and choose “End Task”. Now there is nothing wrong with this approach, in fact as long as it gets the job done it doesn’t matter how you do it. However, ever had the situation where the task manager itself takes ages to load up? Of course it can happen because task manager does a lot of other things besides just ending tasks so it requires that much more resources. Apart from that, how about ending the hung applications with just a single click?
Yeah! you can do so. Its simple to achieve. Just follow along:

* Right click on the desktop and choose New > Shortcut



* In the dialog box that appears just type the following:
taskkill.exe /f /fi “status eq not responding”



* Give it a name of your choice



* Now just wait for something to start “Not Responding” and let loose your Task Killer!
So what did we do exactly? We just created a shortcut to run a command. The command being taskkill. Whenever you double click the shortcut you will invoke the said command which takes care of the rest. In particular the command we use says that kill all taskes whose status is equal to “not responding” and kill them forcefully (/f).

The /fi switch is used to filter and pinpoint the application to kill. We are using the Program’s status to filter the applications that are not responding and then kill them. You can filter(and thus kill) by memory usage (equal to, greater than, less than or not equal to), cpu time, window title and others.