TORRENTS

TORRENTS

Man is a self centered social creature with an inmate need to associate with other like minded social creatures. As such, they hob-nob, mingle,  brag and boast about themselves, their abilities, their possessions and their achievements to the point that it makes other people  sick of their bullshit. Today the Internet is inundated with social networking apps with dozens more still pending, not to mention those on the distant horizon. Platforms for these hyper social individuals that just crave the needs to be in everyone else's face, faking it as if they going to win an Oscar for it. Currently the most prominent of these platforms are Facebook, Twitter, PerfSpot, Instagram, MySpace, Bebo, Xing,  Sonico, Millat Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc, but in no particular order. 

Admittedly social networking has made global communication easy, quick, transparent and very convenient, especially for those who have family and friend abroad. One would think that Telcos are loosing millions in revenue, since nowadays few people are using the telephone networks for telephonic communication. But in reality that's is a myth, they are not loosing millions but instead raking in billions in revenue from bandwidth sold to virtually everyone who owns a smart phone or has an internet connection. Yet most people only use a fraction of the data bandwidth that they pay for monthly, forfeiting several megabytes if not gigabytes. Instead of the Telcos allowing their patrons to accumulate or consolidate their unused bandwidth over time, they usurp it, and this translates to an even greater bottom line for these giant Telco world wide. 

There are some people that are pissed, who hate these policies, and see this as corporate theft and are angered by it, to the point that they resorting to hacking  Telcos. Case in point,  the Talk-Talk lost thousands because of ongoing hack attacks. Their CEO very calmly apologized to the patrons for their inability to secure their networks, but never for stealing from their clients. Be that as it may,  another "social networking platform" known as Torrents can quite easily be used to spend your excess data bandwidth instead of donating it back to these already wealthy Telcos and at least get some books, movie series, full movies, etc in return. A Torrent is a digital file that contains metadata about files and folders to be distributed and uses trackers to interconnects peer to peer networks. 

Bit torrent, Tribler, μTorrent, Tixati, Bittornado, Vuse, Mediaget, Frostwire, Bitlord, Deluge,  Bitcomet, etc... are just a few Torrent clients for Windows, Mac, Android and Linux, amongst several others. Torrents allows your computer to connect to hundreds of other host computers globally. However, the files you choose to download are not hosted on any particular computer but on hundreds of computers strewn all over the internet each seeding a few bytes of the file you need  until the file is fully downloaded. Torrents can be used to download anything from computer software, books, tutorials, music, movies, series, and even porn, if that tickles your pink parts. 

They are very unlike the regular social networking apps that allow people to pass off  their bullshit as insight and their fake comments as caring, spending endless hours umbilicaled to the networks and setting themselves up to be get hacked. Once the files you chose are downloading your computer seeds the file to others who also wish to have the file in question. Torrents can download at speeds of more than  1.5G in an hour or as slow as a 10 megabyte files taking several hours to download. However, Torrents are frowned upon by the authorities and many Torrent sites like Piratebay , and Kickass, Isohunt,  have been forced to close down because of "copyright infringement". However prior to this, these sites have been duplicated and operate in the.org domain. There are also several other Torrent sites like Megatorrents,  Torrentz,   Limetorrents, Torrentfreak, etc. So take extra care when downloading ,  copyright  computer software,  music, books, etc, because the authorities, spooks and government agencies, could track your IP and prosecute you under US Digital Millennium Copyright Act. An alternative is to use the Tor browser if you wish to browse anonymously, without leaving behind a browser history. Several of the Torrent sites are hosted on servers that serve pornographic materials, so if you a bit of a prude, steer clear of Torrent sight because popups can turn out to be quite embarrassing especially if you using a computer in a public place.

HACKERS

HACKERS

Since the arrival of IPV6 and the Internet of  Things (IoT), millions of additional network nodes have extended the realm of the WWW. Needless to say, computer savvy individuals have an inherent curiosity, a burning desire, a need and an itch to interact with these additional network devices. This is as human as wanting to run the fastest race and win. Sing the best and beat the rest. Excel at school to prove your worth. This curiosity and the need to prove yourself goes far beyond the individual, it is the epitome of Governments behaviours. Both Russia and the US of A had the curiosity to go into space and the USA just had to dominate, needed to, or  wanted to ... semantics.  Global militaries have the curiosity to witness the destruction of military hardware and chemical weapons, so Netanyahu just had to drop phosphorus bombs on the Palestinians. They also wanted to out do one another with their displays of military armourments, the one boasting better than the other. This idea of mental prowess and greater ability even extend to the movie business, where Bollywood is bigger but Hollywood just has to prove that it's better. Kiddies cartoons even teach this attitude to our young children for example, Pinky and the Brain, with the Brain wanting to take over the world.... because he can.

If we look back to 1983 when  Ronald Austin of the 414s hacked the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Security Pacific Bank. He and his crew had the curiosity and the knowledge but lacked the computer network to practice on, and prove to themselves that they could do it. They didn't own nor could they afford a computer network of their own to play with, experiment on, hack, reconfigure, etc... So they just had to use the internet which only had 562 host computers at the time as opposed to billions of nodes today. If they had their own hubs, routers, gateway servers, DNS servers, proxy servers, mail servers  and a network with computer running  Microsoft, iOS, Linux, Solaris, Unix and VMS operating systems, they would never have done a live hack that landed Ronald a 3 years probation. They looked upon their hacks as  youthful pranks whereas the authorities saw them as criminals and black hat hackers.

What’s a Blackhat Hacker?

A Black hat hacker is an individual with exceptional computer knowledge, a computer guru if you like, who takes pride in beating cybersecurity expert at their own game by breaching or bypassing their computer network security purely because he can. This doesn't make him a criminal for outwitting his counterparts, it just puts him at the head of his game. So out of pure jealousy he is called a Black hat hackers or a  crackers or a dark-side hacker. Many of these "Black Hat Hackers" become cybersecurity experts and are employed as "White Hat Hackers" by large corporations.  World's most famous hacker Kevin Mitnick was one of the FBI's most Wanted, because he hacked into 40 major corporations just for the challenge, today he is a trusted security consultant to Fortune 500 companies and governments worldwide. He also mentors the theory and practice of social engineering. He published several books on cybersecurity, the latest being 'Ghost in the Wires'. However some "Black Hat Hackers"  hack with maliciousness intent, defacing  web pages, deleting log files, or even crashes the computers or take the entire network offline out of anger. Anger at having extraordinary skills but unemployed. Resulting in some  "Black Hat Hackers"  hacking for personal gain. When they do so, they are more often than not often members of hacking  tiger team. This is the stereotypical  young,  intelligent, highly motivated, energetic and curious male "Black hat hacker" portrayed in popular culture as the computer criminal involved with identity theft and the illegal sale of credit card numbers and fraudulent bank transfers. They are also labelled as the hackers who create computer viruses.

What’s a Whitehat Hacker?

A white hat hacker is normally paid cybersecurity consultants who contracts himself out to both small businesses and large corporations, to perform penetration tests by breaking into their protected computer systems and networks purely to asses the level cyber security. He then informs their IT departments of all computer and network vulnerabilities and how they should be plugged before malicious hackers breach their computers network for criminal purpose. 

Then there are also  "blue hat hackers" and  "gray hat hackers".  Blue hat hackers are normally security professionals working outside of computer security consulting firms who are contracted to bug-test computer system prior to going live. Their objective is to indentify exploits so they can be plugged. A "Grey hat"  computer hacker is an individual with exceptional computer knowledge but  whose "ethical standards" fall somewhere between  altruistic (Whitehat Hacker) and  malicious (Blackhat Hacker). A fence sitter if you like, a white hat that has going bad or a Black hat in the process of cleaning up his act. Uncertain of his loyalties.

CIA AND FBI HACKED

THE CIA AND THE FBI HAVE BEEN HACKED

The young Black Hat hacker crew that hacked into CIA Director John Brennan personal correspondence and that of other  government officials acquired very sensitive security information regarding top-secret Intelligence matters. This enabled them to struck again, but  now infiltrated the FBI. They identified themselves as CWA - "Crackas With Attitude" and subsequently hacked into an  even more important target, which according to them is a private law enforcement portal that granted them access to the US arrest records database and at least  a dozen more law enforcement tools. Amongst which are the  Enterprise File Transfer Service, a tool for sharing files, as well as Intelink the United States Government computer system Justice Enterprise File Sharing, and so much more.

The CIA and the FBI just got hacked

Cracka the leader of the hacker crew provided a screenshot of the arrest records database called JABS which stands for Joint Automated Booking System. This could give them carte blanche to erase criminals records of anyone who has one, for a price and even clean their own slates if they have criminal records or were previously incarcerated. This portal also grants them access to arrest  information of suspected terrorists, gang members and drug merchants.  I wouldn't be surprised if this  information end up on Tor network or Alpha Bay on the deep web for sale to the highest bidder.

JABS database query tool infiltrated by the CWA hacker crew.

However yesterday CWA posted a list of names, phone numbers, and email addresses of more than 3000 government employees, military personel and FBI agents working at various local police departments through the country into Pastebin and Cryptobin. This was done to coincide with Guy Fawkes Day and in solidarity with the "million mask march" of  hacker crew "Anonymous" from the Philippines. As an indication of their seriousness, they named this release  “Part 1” implying that there is more to follow.  Cracka, also said it is their way to hurt the government and not innocent people and that  they are doing this to help the people of Palestine and not for name and fame.

CWA has certainly opened up a can of worms by targeting both the CIA and the FBI of the United States and is sure to become public enemy number one. If they haven't been on the intelligence agencies radar before, they certainly are now.

CYBER WARS CONTINUED

 CYBER WARS CONTINUED

The US is hacking China and China is hacking them in return and somehow the  “biggest government hack ever” got past the Feds and the "multi billion-dollar intrusion detection and prevention system that stands guard over much of the federal government's Internet traffic". By the time the federal authorities finally detected an ongoing remote attack targeting the United States' Office of Personnel Management (OPM) computer systems, the hack was completed. 

During the first hack, some  4.2 million federal workers’ information was stolen, and during the second hack between 21 million to 25 million federal workers and contractors was stolen. But a even larger theft took place in 2006, when over 26 million files were stolen from from the Department of Veteran Affairs when US government data networks was breached. 

This hack may have spanned several months, before the White House  made it public, however it is believed that the attack bears the hallmark of Chinese state-sponsored espionage but no direct evidence has been provided. The add insult to injury OPM has also confirmed that 19.7 million background investigation forms and 1.1 million fingerprint records were stolen not to mention Edward Snowden  exposing NSA surveillance practices and records.

Famous Hacker - Keven Lee Poulsen (Dark Dante)

Two Russian computer hackers  Alexey Ivanov, 20, and Vasiliy Gorshkov, 25, were arrested by the FBI for  victimizing banks and 40 US businesses in 10 states and the theft of credit card numbers in a cross-border hacking case. They were lured to the United States and snared in a cyber-sting.  The case against them is built on reverse hacking by the FBI who accessed the Russian's computers.

According to the charges by government lawyers, the pair may be linked to hundreds of crimes, including the theft of 15,700 credit card numbers from Western Union in Denver in September. The breached US computers servers were running Microsoft software, who  acknowledged that security holes exist in some versions of Windows NT and offered to fix  them at no charge for at least two years. 

Associate professor Robert Morris at MIT (creator of Internet's first worm virus)

Apparently Russia has been cyberspying on the United States, several countries throughout Europe and Asia for more than seven years.  It is believed that a large  hacking crew known as "the Dukes" is spying for the Russian government since  all the signs point back to Russian state sponsorship.   Other reports confirmed that the Kremlin is behind cyber-espionage attacks and Regin seems to be their malware of choose. 

Russian hackers also penetrated U.S. industrial control networks that run critical infrastructures like the electrical grid and its been disclosed   that Moscow has formed a special cyber military  hacker unit as part of preparations for future cyber warfare. US  intelligence agency also singled out China, Iran, and North Korea as the primary nation states capable of conducting sophisticated cyber attacks and espionage stating that Politically motivated cyber attacks are now a growing reality. 

Infosec expert - Mark Abene (Phiber Optik)

US Statistics on cybercrime show a huge disparity between the number of attacks reported and the number of people who actually get caught. Based on this more and more computer savvy people are turning to hacking starting out with the firm intention of not getting caught. 

However, hackers like Kevin Mitnick, Eric Bloodaxe, Keven Lee Poulsen (Dark Dante), "Data Stream". "Knight lightning", Mark Abene (Phiber Optik), Paul Stira (Scorpion), Elias Ladopoulos (Acid Phreak), Robert Morris, who are worth their weight in gold have been caught and served time.

THE INTERNET OF THINGS

THE INTERNET OF THINGS

ICT and Cybersecurity experts warned that companies need to pay greater attention to their computer networks' cybersecurity and add that Telecoms company TalkTalk got hacked because “it wasn’t paying enough attention to its cybersecurity,” and that the recent  Ashley Madison attack,  is just the “the tip of  iceberg”.  They add that the growing threat by hackers is very real and that the cyber attacks comparable to the 9/11 event can be expected but needs to be thwarted before they happen.  With the arrival of the Internet of Things (IoT) a lot more devices are connected to the Internet and this number is constantly growing,  and provides new ways for hackers to gain access to private and confidential data. Experts recommend that network security must be part of a company’s core infrastructure because the few professional cybersecurity companies globally just aren't  enough to stop the constant barrage of cyber threats. 

 Barack Obama and  Xi Jinping

President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping met as recent as the 25 Sept 2015 in Washington and reached an “understanding” not to use cyber spies to commit economic espionage and not to hack private firms in each other’s country for economic gain. But in less tan 20 days  a U.S. cybersecurity company claims that it has evidence that hackers linked to the Chinese government tried to violate a recent agreement between Washington and Beijing. American business have complained for a number of years that Chinese hackers have sought to steal trade secrets from U.S. corporate computers. In retaliation U.S. spy organizations have hacked into Chinese companies claiming that American officials performed these hacks  for national security purposes and not to steal Chinese trade secrets. Washington’s determination to eradicate Chinese cyber theft and ban all forms of digital protectionism resulted in regional trade pact with Pacific Rim countries  requiring  them to criminalize hacking attacks on U.S. companies.

US officials currently working on the Iran policy determined that the recent surge of cyber attacks by the Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to email and social media accounts of Obama administration officials it possibly  linked to arrest of  Siamak Namazi an Iranian-American businessman. The Iranian military  Revolutionary Guards have regularly made hacking attacks on US government agencies in recent years but has increased  after the landmark international agreement to eased severe economic sanctions on Iran in return for Tehran curbing its nuclear program.  

The World  Wide Web is the direct consequence of  all the hacking taking place globally but even though these hacks cost global business move than  £200bn last year, the Internet is non-the-less an indispensable  global resource which no country can function without. It is in this sense that ministers of the Obama administration are demanding answer with respect to the protection of the vital undersea Internet cables.  The Russian government recently spooked US officials by dispatching a submarine equipped to cut undersea cables along the East Coast of the United States. 

However the threat is much closer to home. A  teenage hacker crew has been casing John Brennan director of the CIA and other  government officials. A hacker with the alias "Cracka",  hacked into an email account belonging to the FBI Deputy Director Mark Giuliano  getting into a Comcast email that’s under Giuliano’s wife’s name.  They even provided several screenshots to prove they hacked the account but declined to reveal how they did it.

CYBERCRIME

CYBERCRIME FRENZY

It is common knowledge that Cybercrime cost global business more than £200bn last year. Statistically one in six companies have been hacked in the past year alone, and the financial and legal sectors are especially targeted but no exclusively. Having said that, the Talk Talk Telecom Group got hacked last Thursday  and the customers' bank details were stolen for the third time in eight months. TalkTalk previously got hacked in August and again in February. Management speculated that the hackers made off with some the 4 million client accounts, but after further investigation realized it to be a lot less. In an attempt to appease worried customers, Dido Harding apologized for the hacking before TalkTalk released official figures based on their internal investigation.  Announcing that some 20,000 bank account numbers and 28,000 partially obscured credit card details were accessed. Their investigation further showed that some 1.2 million customer email addresses, names and phone numbers were accessed.  

TalkTalk just got hacked

To add insult to injury, these very customers' bank details are already up for sale for £1.62 each (Bitcoins) on Alpha Bay Website by a hacker with the alias 'Martian'.  It is believed that Eastern European criminal gangs are the main buyers of such stolen financial data. A  hacker claimed that he could make £150,000 by getting hold of the data and selling it on to many gangs.

Beware of Alpha Bay on the deep web

Tuesday marked the 98th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, and Pro-Palestinian hackers on took over over the Twitter feed of the Hebrew-language Haaretz news website and sending threatening text messages to journalists. Among the tweets posted by the unknown hackers: “The Holocaust of the Balfour Declaration will continue the knife intifada”; “The mothers of our martyrs will drink the blood of your soldiers and settlers,” and “The memory of the Balfour Declaration has changed the situation, wait for the massacre that will be arriving soon.” Apart from the tweets, a sms expressing similar sentiments and threats was sent out to cell phones around Israel. “A continuous Holocaust upon you until you give back the right to its owners,” 

Goldman Sachs Private Capital Investment Group have just coughed up $35 million to a Cybersecurity company to secure their computer network because in 2014 hackers gained access to confidential and personal information of 83 million of JP Morgan's customers. The credentials of the Cybersecurity company has been verified by Deloitte and their hype seems very promising but only time will tell. This is the type of mark that hackers find very, very interesting and a challenge to prove that any and all forms of cybersecurity is purely a deterrent and not hacker proof.

GETTING PAID TO HACK

GETTING PAID TO HACK

During most of 2014 numerous hacking stories made it to the head lines of several newspapers. Data worth millions of dollars were stolen, websites were defaced and confidential client data was released to the general public. These acts drove fear into the hearts of Governments and fortune 500 companies, to the point that Tech Companies like Google, Tesla, Facebook, Apple and several other incentivized hackers and hacker crews to attempt to breach their computer network security, in exchange for a handsome payout should they be successful. Movies like Hackers and Blackhat, and TV series like Mr Robot,, NCIS, Criminal Minds and Continuum only served to entice White Hat and Grey Hat hacker squads to go "Black hat" and chase the bounty. However the objective of these companies were to identify weaknesses in the network security and plug it after getting feedback from hackers as to how they got in. Well that happens when they hire the wrong ITC people and especially network administrators with mediocre hacking skills.

The Hacker in Mr Robot

In September, a  bounty of  $1 million was publicly offered to anyone who could successfully hack the latest versions of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 9.1 and 9.2b, on a new iPhone or iPad. The rules stated that the iPhone hack must “be achievable remotely, reliably, silently, and without requiring any user interaction, other than visiting a web page or reading a text message”.  Only Google Chrome and Apple’s own Safari browsers were allowed to be used for the hack.  On Monday 2 November,  security company Zerodium  announced that they have agreed to pay out that seven-figure sum to the hacker crew who successfully developed a technique that can hack any iPhone or iPad and can trick them into visiting a carefully crafted web site. Two hackers teams have been actively working on the challenge both keeping their eyes on the prize. But only hacker crew  managed to develop  a complete remote jailbreak however the second team  may qualify for a partial bounty. Zerodium will brief Apple on the exploit so that the holes in the iOS  can be plugged. The procedures of this hack is especially valuable, given that government agencies including the NSA and CIA have had difficulty hacking into iPhones.

Europe’s Chaos Computer Club is very disappointed that Apple rejected the group’s streaming video app. The Apple app would've allowed interested parties to watch  the  Chaos Communications Congress event talks in real time. But it turns out the Apple is still pissed because members of the conference had previously hacked iOS. Apple claims they don’t want to help spread the hacking word even though  fellow hacker Steve Wasniak and co-founder of Apple was part of the “white hat” hacker community.  Shame on you Apple for depriving the hacker community and denying the principals upon which Apple was built. However the conference live streams are available on both the Chaos Computer Club’s official website and on YouTube and still accessible to Apple users.

Electric caremaker Tesla Motors invited hackers to try to breach their vehicle's systems and offered hackers attending the SyScan conference in Beijing $10,000 earlier this month if they could hack and control its electric Model S sedan. A "white hats" hacking crew from Zhejiang University was awarded $1,700  for their efforts because they didn't achieve the goal within the specified time frame even though they gained access. After the hackers explain how they did, Tesla patched many of the vulnerabilities to make the Tesla a safer car.

The all electric Tesla car

Wauconda's website was hacked on Friday 30 October or sometime during the past weekend  The hackers  or hacker replaced much of the onsite municipal information  by anti-American and anti-Israeli photographs and pro-Islam messages. Turns out Doug Maxeiner the village Administrator was quite offended by the image of the burning U.S. flag but its more likely that he is his pissed because he got hacked and couldn't do anything about it. Blaming the hack on their web hosting company in Charleston inability to block them because he believes the hacker or hackers achieved accessed the website through the ISP's system. Wauconda police are aware of the hacking who was also asked to notify the FBI of the incident. The Mayor said this also happened to the Wauconda police website and ads that it was also done a radical Islamist group. That's sander and without proof it could be anyone, perhaps even the Pope. 

Anonymous Hacker crew Philippines wearing Guy Fawkes Masks

Anonymous Philippines, is an anti-government hacking crew with a mission to “fight for freedom, truth, and justice” and their  latest victim is non other than the Ku Klux Klan. A hacking campaign dubbed "Operation KKK" with the sole intent to  harass members of the racist group online, embarrass and intimidate then and shame them  publicly.  "Anonymous"  have released two lists of alleged KKK members retrieved from a KKK database. The "Anonymous" crew  have previously targeted  the electronics giant Sony, the Church of Scientology, the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church. Earlier this year, the "Anonymous" crew hacked and defaced 20 government websites seeking justice for the 44 fallen policemen at the Mamasapano incident. Last September, they did the same thing to the National Telecommunications Commissions (NTC) website. They are known to wear Guy Fawkes masks in public and instigated the "Million Mask March" planed for November 5, 2015--Guy Fawkes Day.  Anonymous claimed responsibility for breaking into the social media twitter account of Maine on Tuesday morning to get access to her 2.4 million followers and inform them all of the "Million Mask March".

KKK lighting up a cross with gasoline.

HACKING THE NET

HACKING THE NET

Curiosity and inquisitiveness are two characteristics deeply ingrained in nature and is a very natural part of all life forms. Curiosity killed the cat but inquisitiveness has sent many a hacker to jail for 'cybercrime' though over zealous inquisitiveness is normally their only crime. Anyone with sufficient interest in the 'art of hacking' can become quite accomplish in just a few short months  but mastering it takes substantially longer.  The learning curve of hacking is fairly steep, the subject is extremely interesting and the knowledge totally beyond awesome. Hence you hear names like, “Digigod”, “Cybergod” “Solo”, “C0mrade”, “Dark Dante” and   “Byteking”, etc, etc, because analytical thought,  mental brilliance or a high IQ and  does tend give some people a complex of superiority. Which in some cases borders on arrogance then stupidity. 

When one gets the hang of computers, ports, software and programming, understand communications protocols, have a familiarity with networks and routing tables and can visualize how they seamlessly integrate, curiosity can get the better of you. Knowing when to stop  is the difference between a hacker and a cracker. Crackers are those individuals or teams intent on stealing sensitive or classified information, credit card details and other forms of identity theft for financial gain. Whereas hackers are those individuals who respect personal and corporate boundaries and do what they do for personal pleasure and advancement of knowledge. Most hackers today are employed as network security consultants or security analysts and the best example of such a hacker is Kevin Mitnick. He served time for his inquisitiveness and now works  as a network security professional. People with hacking skills are in big demand and normally command above decent salaries.  There is an old saying that says, "it takes a thief to catch a thief" well likewise "it takes a hacker (“White Hat”) to catch a cracker" ( “Black Hats” ).  One of the hackers were even referred to as  the “Hannibal Lecter of computer crime.”

Kevin Mitnick hacker supreme

Hacking is a serious offence and as recent as 28th August,  'smilex' the administrator of the botnet “Bugat” aka Dridex got nabbed in Cypress by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In a joint venture of U.K and US disrupted his botnet which infected more than 125 000 computers in one year. Smilex is innocent until proven guilty but has already been labeled as a cyber criminal. He is being held for releasing a sophisticated malware package designed to steal banking and other credentials from infected computers that amounts to millions of USD. Smilex's real name is Andrey Ghinkul  or Andrei Ghincul and he is from Moldova.  It is alleged that he and  his co-conspirators used the Dridex P2P malware to initiate fraudulent electronic funds transfers  from the victims’ bank accounts into the accounts of their money mules, who then transferred the stolen funds to other members of the conspiracy. 

Black hat hacker

The first offence was a transfer of $999,000 from the Sharon, Pennsylvania, City School District’s account at First National Bank to an account in Kiev, Ukraine.  The second offence was a transfer of  $2,158,600 from a Penneco Oil account held at First Commonwealth Bank to an account in Krasnodar, Russia.  The third offence was a transfer of   $1,350,000 from a Penneco Oil account held at First Commonwealth Bank to an account in Minsk, Belarus.  The fourth was a attempt to transfer $76,520 from a Penneco Oil account held at First Commonwealth Bank to an account in Philadelphia. But the FBI estimates that peer-to-peer malware and the Bugat botnet is responsible for at  least $10 million domestically. The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in collaboration with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DOJ), have released a Technical Alert (TA15-286A)  for all Microsoft Windows Affected Systems  about the Dridex botnet. 

Because Smilex targeted American businesses, the USA is seeking for his extradition so that he can be tried in America. He will be charged with criminal conspiracy, unauthorized computer access with intent to defraud, damaging a computer, wire fraud and bank fraud.   But don't let this put you off from learning hacking, because the key to becoming a successful hacker  is to know where to draw the line.

If you've been infected, the following anti-virus software could help to alleviate your problems.

F-Secure
https://www.f-secure.com/en/web/home_global/online-scanner/

McAfee
http://www.mcafee.com/uk/downloads/free-tools/stinger.aspx/

Microsoft
http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx/ 
       
Sophos
https://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/virus-removal-tool.aspx/

Trend Micro
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/