Microsoft's interstitial warning page to help people whose computers have been infected by the Bamital botnet.
(Credit: Microsoft)Microsoft and security software maker Symantec have revealed that they collaborated on the take-down of a botnet that had infected hundreds of thousands of computers.
By stopping the botnet, infected computers were reportedly unable to search the Internet. According to the story as first reported by Reuters, this is the first time that the companies which stopped the botnet directly warned people who had infected computers and offered them clean-up tools.
The botnet, called Bamital, is the sixth one that that Microsoft has received a court order to stop since 2010 and the second that it has worked with Symantec to halt. Last week, the companies asked for a court approval to shut it down, reported Reuters.
Vikram Thakur, principal security response manager at Symantec, explained the scope of the infections in a joint phone call with Microsoft's assistant general counsel to its Digital Crimes Unit, Richard Boscovich. "The data we have shows that the infections were extremely global, with the largest number of users in the United States," Thakur said.
Read the Microsoft legal filing against the 18 parties accused of running Bamital.Bamital worked by redirecting sites you would click on in search results from Google, Bing, and Yahoo to Web sites controlled by the parties responsible for the botnet. Bamital would "subvert legitimate results," said Jeff Williams, currently director of the Security Strategy unit for Dell SecureWorks. Last year Williams worked directly on the Bamital botnet case for Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit. "This is different from a toolbar [like Ask or Conduit] which isn't taking over specific search results," he told CNET.
In the case of the Bamital botnet, which Reuters said earned at least $1 million per year, Symantec had approached Microsoft more than a year ago to collaborate on stopping it. Thakur said that although this botnet was only a medium-size one, with 300,000 to 600,000 infected computers, it was not easy to stop.
"When we started following the botnet a year ago, it went through several iterations over the year's time. For us to gather all the evidence, to understand how to put a plan together to spare users from negative effects after it went down, it took about a year," he said.
Microsoft's Boscovich added that this kind of iteration is unusual for a botnet. "The interesting thing about this is that the people behind the botnet were playing with the botnet over time, fine-tuning the botnet, so it took some time until it was stable enough for us to make our move," he said.
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Williams said that one aspect of the Bamital case is that the "criminals" will "move the botnet servers from one location to another to another. The trade craft of criminals is constantly evolving, so as the techniques of law enforcement get better, the criminals will change their tactics over time.
Boscovich and Thakur agreed that while you can expect more botnets going forward, improving laws and further collaboration between companies like Microsoft and Symantec will make it harder for the botnet to succeed.
"The more we do these operations, the more it becomes evident in the underground community that we're onto them," Boscovich said. The collaboration between Microsoft and Symantec, as well as the particular way that the Bamital botnet was structured, allowed the two companies to do more than just shutter the botnet and warn Internet service providers.
Thakur said that this is the the first time in a botnet case that the groups responsible for stopping it were able to provide a warning site and tools to disinfect afflicted machines.
"We wanted to make sure that when the victim would search, they would see a page that looked like a legitimate Microsoft page, with Microsoft and Symantec's logos. It would explain in clear language why they were there and how to clean their computer," said Boscovich. "It was also specific about saying that they could go to the AV [antivirus] provider of their choice. But we also made it clear that if they did, their computer wouldn't be cleaned."
Williams noted that Netherlands' National High Tech Crime Unit provided a warning page in the 2010 take-down of the Bredolab botnet, but did not offer malware removal tools.
In addition to directly helping people whose computers were infected, Microsoft took the unusual step of including aliases, e-mail addresses, physical addresses, and telephone numbers of those accused of running the botnet.
Although the botnet was run by 18 "ringleaders" scattered across the world, investigators at Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit told Reuters that the botnet was most likely Russian in origin thanks to the inclusion of a Russian phrase in one of the botnet's cookies.
Microsoft, Symantec shutter another botnet | Security & Privacy - CNET News
BlackBerry Z10 Review - Watch CNET's Video Review
On January 30, 2013, RIM (Research in Motion) announced that the company will officially be known as BlackBerry.
Members of the BlackBerry Faithful, meet your new phone. The BlackBerry Z10 has everything you've been waiting for: a sleek, modern, and professional touch-screen body with an up-to-date OS to match and 4G LTE support. You'll revel in the virtual keyboard's ease and in BlackBerry Messenger's seamless voice chats. You'll crow about the Z10's Micro-HDMI port, and enjoy the 8-megapixel camera with its built-in editing tools.
In the most important ways, everything comes together: a lovely HD screen, a fast processor, a camera (with tricks!) that's good enough to stand alongside the big boys.
Slip off the RIM-colored glasses, though, and you won't be able to ignore the minor hardware and OS irritations that nevertheless pile up as you use the Z10 over time -- like having to use an antiquated and unintuitive file system to create a new photo album, and a basic mapping app that can't possibly stand up to Google's best-in-show. For their part, BlackBerry detractors will plainly see a poor iPhone clone that offers little more than the usual features found in any present-day OS worth its salt.
If you're game to learn a few navigational gestures and your bigger-picture mentality lets you see beyond annoyances, you should feel justified buying the BlackBerry Z10. However, if you're happy with your current platform, there's no need to budge unless or until RIM patches up some OS holes.
The BlackBerry Z10 goes on sale January 31 in the U.K., February 5 in Canada ($149.99 on contract), and February 10 in the UAE. Expect U.S. carriers to sell the smartphone for about $199 on contract (about $599 unlocked) in March. Verizon was the first to officially announce that it will carry the white and black versions of the Z10 for $199 on contract. Verizon has the exclusive lock on the white version.
Editors' note: This Blackberry Z10 smartphone review is based on early impressions after a full week of use a review unit that BlackBerry seeded to select press; rating is subject to change as we spend more time with the device and operating system. You may also be interested in our full review of the BlackBerry 10 operating system.
Design and build
At first glance, the handsome BlackBerry Z10 looks suspiciously like Apple's black iPhone 5: tall and narrow, with straight edges that meet at rounded corners, and a roughly 4-inch screen. Like the iPhone 5, the Z10 is adept at one-handed operation. That's where the similarities end.You see, the Z10 has no navigation buttons, either physical or capacitive. Instead, you'll operate the Z10 through gestures (more on those later). The phone stands 5.1 inches tall, 2.6 inches wide, and 0.35 inch thick -- only slightly deeper than the iPhone 5. Its 4.8-ounce weight feels right with the phone's proportions, and the device has a much more comfortable grip than the iPhone, thanks to the slightly rounded edges on the back and a lightly textured, soft-touch finish.
The BlackBerry Z10 (left), resembles the iPhone 5, at least in shape.
(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)Of the two phones, the iPhone undeniably has the more solid, premium, and precise build quality. Its seams are as narrow as possible, and its details are finely machined. For those who care about such things, the iPhone 5's material quality trumps the Z10's treated plastics and loose back panel that too easily pops out when I slide a nail anywhere along its perimeter.
Larger than the iPhone 5 overall, the Z10's shape still fits neatly into pockets (I use my back pockets for trips around the office and the neighborhood). However, it feels uncomfortably flat when I wedge it between my shoulder and my ear. And yes, this is precisely why many people use a wireless headset.
In between the BlackBerry Z10's volume buttons is the voice control key.
(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)On its face, the Z10's 4.2-inch LCD display has a 1,280x768-pixel WXGA HD resolution (that's 355 pixels per inch; the iPhone 5 has a 326ppi density.) You'll see fine lettering, crisp edges, and deep colors. I did notice, though, that with both handsets set to maximum brightness, the iPhone 5 outshone the Z10, and an HD picture of a flower looked brighter, more detailed, and had more color variation on Apple's device. On the whole, the differences between the two are minimal. The bezel surrounding the screen is frankly wider than today's edge-to-edge fashion, but this doesn't personally bother me.
Above the display are the array of sensors, the notification LED, and the 2-megapixel front-facing camera. The right spine houses Up and Down volume controls, with a button in the center that serves as a voice command trigger you can also use to pause music. If you simultaneously press both volume buttons, you'll take a screenshot. If you're in camera mode, pressing either one snaps a picture.
Few smartphones can claim an HDMI port, but the Z10 is one of them.
(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)On the Z10's left edge are the Micro-HDMI port and Micro-USB port. The placement of the latter pretty much guarantees that the charging cord gets in my way. Up top, you'll find the power/lock button and the 3.5 millimeter headset jack -- you'll hold down the start button for a 3-second countdown to turn off the phone. On the back are the camera lens with LED flash, and a BlackBerry icon that matches up with the NFC antenna on the opposite side of the back panel.
Also underneath that panel are the tall, narrow battery (I wonder if there was room for larger?) and a microSD card slot. The Z10 comes preloaded with a 8GB class 2 microSD card. That's good, right? It would be if the card supported the camera's option to capture 1080p HD video. As a result, you'll shoot video in 720p HD if you don't switch out the card to class 4 or higher.
BlackBerry 10 OS
Here's what you need to know about the new BlackBerry 10 OS: it looks cool, it's gesture-driven, and it'll take you at least a few minutes to pick up. In some ways it's quite advanced -- I'm a fan of BlackBerry Balance and the virtual keyboard -- and in other ways, you wonder what RIM's been doing all these years.
RIM's new smartphone OS throws out buttons in favor of navigational gestures.
(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)My full review of the BlackBerry 10 OS goes deep: into the layout, gestures, the Hub, maps, music, the keyboard, the browser...and that's the beginning. For more on the OS, I highly recommend skipping on over to the BlackBerry 10 OS review. But don't worry, I'll still give you a flavor of what to expect right here on these pages.
Features and apps
When it comes to multiple accounts and a unified inbox, BlackBerry 10 delivers. You can sign into multiple e-mail accounts and social networks, and populate your address book and calendar from these cross-pollinated networks. I didn't see contact duplicates, and my buddies' addresses also appeared neatly sorted in the maps app, basically the only really nice surprise there.You'll find Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n), Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, and all the good stuff when it comes to texting, chatting with other BlackBerry users, and sharing stuff to social networks. There's a good music app, a basic maps app, and the mostly-good Documents To Go, which opens the door to reading, creating, and editing Word and Excel documents, and viewing PowerPoint and Adobe PDF files.
Twitter and Facebook for BlackBerry 10 OS.
(Credit: Screenshot by Jaymar Cabebe/CNET)For your social networking apps, the BlackBerry serves up a healthy spoonful of Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and LinkedIn. And yes, these are real apps, not just links to mobile Web sites masquerading as apps. You know what is, though? YouTube. I'm looking forward to a full-fledged app from them.
In addition to the social apps, you'll find a notes program, an alarm clock with special bedtime mode (it shuts off alerts, but don't hold your breath for lullabies). There's Flixster, Box, and Dropbox, the awesome Angry Birds Star Wars, Slacker Radio, and in my review unit, quite a lot of Canadian news, sports, and transportation apps.
You'll find downloadable programs, games, music, and shows in BlackBerry App World, and if you happen to listen to music while you browse, you can control it through a widget that pops up as a widget where you browse (left).
(Credit: Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)More content is close at hand in BlackBerry World, where you can browse by apps, games, music, videos, and TV shows. Rovio powers the shows, while longtime partner 7 Digital handles the music. Strangely, you can search for top paid apps, but there aren't any filtering options specifically for free programs.
BlackBerry Balance and business use
Business and security-conscious users have long been RIM's bread and butter. The BlackBerry Z10 serves this demographic well with BlackBerry Balance, which helps separate sensitive business apps from your personal ones, with the help of your corporate IT manager. There are privacy settings and RIM's signature encrypted servers, plus parental controls -- not to mention remote wiping with BlackBerry Protect.With the Z10, RIM takes aim at both individual consumers looking for a smart new device and business professionals who could easily pass this phone to an IT administrator to get work-approved apps. The thing is, in today's climate of bring-your-own-phone, many businesses can get by with little extra security and have abandoned fleets of devices. Having been out of the game for so long, it could be a hard sell.
Cameras and video
For a long time now, the BlackBerry camera has been a weak spot. No longer. The Z10 packs a respectable 8-megapixel shooter in the back and a 2-megapixel lens up front. Both record 720p HD video, and the larger of the two can also shoot 1080p HD video.
The Z10's camera took some bright, zingy outdoor shots.
(Credit: Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)
Here's the flower in full resolution, cropped but otherwise untouched.
(Credit: Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)The main camera comes with autofocus, 5x digital zoom, and options for burst mode and stabilization. Pressing either volume button can snap a shot. TimeShift mode takes an array of photos, and lets you revisit them along a timeline to pick the one you like best. There are scene modes (like action and night) and you can choose to take pictures in a 3:4 or 9:16 ratio. (For more on TimeShift, see the full BlackBerry 10 OS review.)
Whatever he's doing, CNET editor Jaymar Cabebe is most definitely not posing for the camera.
(Credit: Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)Although there's autofocus, focusing elsewhere isn't intuitive. Touching the screen anywhere triggers the shutter, so you'll just have to know to drag the focal bracket around the screen.
Jaymar at full resolution. You can easily see a ton of noise.
(Credit: Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)Budding photographers will also notice scant options and controls. There's no HDR, no ISO settings, no grid, no geotagging, no option to drop resolution, and -- one of its worst offenses in my opinion -- no way to silence the shutter's loud clacking.
I've heard phone makers argue that most casual users don't need features overkill, but I submit that it's nice to have, especially if you'd like phone owners to leave the dSLR at home and use your phone as their camera instead.
You can make out the individual furs in this cute plushy, shot indoors.
(Credit: Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)
Microsoft Office 2013 Review - Watch CNET's Video Review
I really like the new Microsoft Office 2013, even knowing there are several free productivity suites available out there. I wouldn't blame you for asking why you would pay for it when you could get a comparable set of office tools from Google Docs and several other services for a lot less or even free. But after using Office 365 Home Premium on both a tablet and a desktop PC for the last few days, I can tell you that there are plenty of reasons to trade up.
A note about nomenclature: there are an enormous number of versions of the Microsoft Office suite available across the home and business categories. You can purchase and download standalone versions with either Microsoft Office Home and Student 2013 ($139) or Microsoft Office Home and Business 2013 ($219). There are additional versions with volume pricing for small and large businesses. But what Microsoft is banking on are the subscription services that have a few more perks, such as endless upgrades as they become available, and still offer most of the same downloadable software. These are Office 365 Home Premium ($99.99 per year) and Office 365 Small Business Premium ($150 per year). There's also a great deal for current students, Office 365 University at only about $40 per year (with a minimum two-year subscription). The pricing breakdown and naming conventions are highly confusing, but ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley tries to make sense of it all here.
With all that said, what I'm reviewing here is Office 365 Home Premium, and I definitely like what I see -- especially when I can put it on five machines for $100 per year. For starters it's available wherever you are, on whatever device you're using at the time. With full touch-screen support, the entire suite has been reinvented to work with Windows 8-driven tablets and smartphones, making much of the work flow much easier than before regardless of the hardware you're using. Along with a redesigned interface, all of these things come together to make the best Office yet.
Office as a subscription
As I said above, the cloud-connected Office 365 suite comes in separate versions for home and business, with the home version available today and the business version available at the end of February. You can get one of the desktop standalone versions of the new Office, but I don't think it's the best way to experience Office. With today's release, it's clear Microsoft would prefer you sign up for the subscription because the standalone versions won't receive all the upgrades over time that you would get with Office 365 Home Premium. In fact, with a subscription plan, Microsoft says you'll never have to buy another new version of Office again. But whether you choose to pay one time for the new Office or sign up for a subscription to Office 365, you'll mostly get the exact same experience I'm writing about here. It's only later, when Office gets upgraded again, that the standalone versions will become out-of-date.So why should you get the new Office? In a word: convenience. I'm not just talking about the convenience of continuing to use what you've used before -- I'm talking about the suite itself. What Microsoft has done in this latest version is make Office usable on a tablet running Windows 8 and, in converting the myriad productivity tools to support touch screens, the company had to make most actions only one click (or tap) away. So while it has streamlined the suite out of necessity for Windows 8 and use on tablets, it's now easier to use than ever before regardless of the hardware you're using it on. It's important to note that the software works equally as well if you're running Windows 7, but does not work with earlier versions of Windows. Setting up a subscription for the Mac version will only let you install Office 2011 on five Macs, with updates to the Mac version coming in the next year. In other words, Mac users will see no improvement right now.
On Windows, Microsoft lets you install Office 365 on five different computers with your single subscription, each with its own customizable experience that is tied to each Microsoft account. This means you could be creating a PowerPoint presentation in one room on your account, while your daughter writes an essay in another on hers, and each of you can give the Office apps personalized themes, and each will see the most recent documents tied to your personal account. All of your work is attached to your Microsoft account and backed up to Microsoft's SkyDrive, so you'll be able to access your work anywhere. You can already get 7GB of space on SkyDrive now for free, but with these Office 365 Home Premium subscription plans you get an additional 20GB.
The features that set Office 365 apart from most free offerings are the integration between the apps in the suite and an enormous collection of premade templates to fulfill almost any productivity need. The templates all have a polished and professional look so you'll waste almost no time creating documents from scratch. The suite of apps works seamlessly together -- and with Microsoft's services -- making collaboration, sharing, and communications much easier.
Installation
Installing Office is the same whether you bought a standalone copy or signed up for the subscription -- it begins with a quick trip to Office.com. Simply enter the product key you received from the retailer (Microsoft, Amazon, or any of several others) and follow the step-by-step process from there. You'll then download the digital copies of the software in the suite to use straight off your hard drive.
The Ribbon is still here and offers a wealth of tools across each tab as it detects the most common uses for the content you have selected. But if you don't like the Ribbon, you now have the option to hide it and bring it back only when you need it.
(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)The interface
The interface across the entire suite of applications has been reinvented, mostly for the better. First off, the Ribbon, which disappointed many users when it first appeared in Office 2007, remains part of the new Office. But before you start grumbling, consider that Microsoft has made it optional this time around. So now you can show or hide the exhaustive collections of tools across every tab, and decide how much or how little you want to use them. In my review of Office 2010 I liked the Ribbon, but I've heard enough from users who disagree to know that Microsoft has made a wise change.Aside from the Ribbon, the interface is similar but much simpler than it was in Office 2010 and earlier. Newly added start pages for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel help you get to recent documents attached to your account and new templates immediately upon launch. Flat buttons and plenty of white space make the interface look less crowded. Other interface tweaks are tablet-focused such as the radial menus in OneNote that show options (like sharing, search, and zoom tools) in a circle around the area you press. The general feel of the suite is more streamlined and more cloud-integrated, and the new start pages for the core apps will be especially useful for those looking at the same documents on several devices.
The new Presenter View in PowerPoint shows you the next slide in the presentation on the right and offers tools (like a virtual laser pointer) and your notes on the left so you always know what's coming up next.
(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)
Bring us the features! An Ars staff wish list for iOS 7 | Ars Technica
Aurich LawsonIt's 2013, which most likely means another major iOS update will soon come down the tubes from Apple. iOS 7 has already begun popping up in some server logs—no huge surprise, since Apple is constantly working on its next big thing(s). But so far, we know virtually nothing about what to expect from iOS 7. After all, the general public is still only on iOS 6.0.2, with iOS 6.1 reportedly just around the corner.
While the 6.1 update will undoubtedly improve on what we already have, iOS 7 has the potential to make significant changes and improvements to how iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad users interact with their devices. So, what better opportunity for the Ars staff to dream and speculate about what we'd really like to see Apple do with its next major release? I asked a number of our iOS-using staff members to tell me the most important items on their wish lists and came up with a list of eight things we think would be great to see when iOS 7 is released to the public.
1) Let us set and remove our own default apps
Could there be a more common complaint about iOS than this? Users are dying to have the ability to specify their own default apps for things like Web browsing, mapping, task management, notes, and more—but Apple won't let us. The time is now: Apple should add a panel in the iOS Settings that lets us do this so that when we click a link from another app, we don't have to use Safari, or when we tap on an address on a webpage, we don't have to use Maps.
This has long been a common request from Ars staffers, and it topped the list when I asked this time around as well. "Apple could even provide some kind of spec that a third-party app would have to conform to before it can be allowed as the new default e-mail client," John Siracusa said. "It doesn't have to be as wide open as it is on OS X, but I don't think it can stay as closed as it is now forever." On that same note, isn't it about time for us to be able to delete Apple's default apps? You know, the ones we all shuffle into their own folder on the last Springboard screen (mine is called "Shit I never use"), such as Stocks, Compass, Game Center, or whatever else doesn't strike your fancy. "The ability to remove default iOS apps (like the thrice-damned Newsstand and Game Center) would be wonderful," said Reviews Editor Lee Hutchinson, but I doubt it will ever happen."
2) Take Do Not Disturb to the next level
We like Do Not Disturb, which was introduced with iOS 6 in late 2012, even though it has run into some high-profile bugs lately. The feature allows us to schedule times when our devices won't ring, buzz, or light up when receiving calls or notifications—great for trying to get some uninterrupted sleep, or during important times of the day. But the feature is still very basic—you can only schedule one time block at a time (say, 11pm to 7am every day), or manually turn it on/off as needed.
As Chris Foresman pointed out, iOS users could really benefit from the ability to apply finer-grained scheduling to the Do Not Disturb feature. "Being able to have different schedules for different days of the week," he said, would allow people to specify different times for weekdays versus weekends, or add special items like regular business meetings. Apple could also take this feature to the next level by stealing a feature from RIM and the BlackBerry: power management. Some of us would rather just have our iPhones (or other iOS devices) shut down altogether at certain times of day—call it a more forced version of Do Not Disturb. "All Macs have power management options, including the ability to have a device shutdown at a specific time and wake up at a specific time," Ars Editor-in-Chief Ken Fisher said. "The BlackBerry has had this functionality for years. Apple could land on the right side of green by including this support."
3) Multiple users per device—or at least a kid mode
We're sure you've heard this one before—how many times have you handed your iDevice to a family member or friend, only to have them start digging into your e-mail or moving around your home screen icons? The ability to manage multiple users on a single device like we can on the Mac (and pretty much every other computing platform) would help mitigate this problem, though not everyone agrees such a feature would be helpful or easy-to-use on a tiny mobile device like the iPhone—perhaps it would be more useful on the iPad, a device that's much more likely to be shared among a family or roommates.
But even if you don't like the idea of a multi-user iOS device, users with kids seem to agree hands-down that a "kid mode" would be a huge help. It could be an extension of Apple's current Parental Controls that allows parents to flip a switch and put the device into a mode that allows limited access to only certain apps, temporarily turn off the ability to answer (or make) phone calls, limit the Web from all available apps, completely turn off in-app purchasing power, and so on. Even those of us without kids (myself included) could make use of this feature when visiting friends or family with children; I know I've had my iPhone co-opted by toddlers many times, only to find them making FaceTime calls to all my friends 10 minutes later. We don't mind handing over our iOS devices to children to distract themselves, but a way to keep them (and the devices) safe during that time would be a great feature to have.
4) A better way to organize and manage apps
The tapping and holding until apps start to wiggle. The dragging between screens. The apps shifting around when you don't want them to while you're trying to move something else. That annoying phenomenon when you realize all your infrequently used apps are piling up on the ninth-Springboard-screen-back. App organization drives us all crazy from time to time, and the Ars staff would like some fresh ways to clean up.
"I want some new thinking, like being able to swipe down to reveal widgets, and swipe up to reveal a drawer for fast moving of icons," Creative Director Aurich Lawson said. "It's time to acknowledge that the UI that was designed for a phone that didn't even have the concept of downloading apps hasn't kept up with the times." But if we're going to revamp how we organize apps on our devices, we should also revamp how we can manage them from the cloud, says Social Editor Cesar Torres. He pointed out that it's sometimes difficult to remember whether certain apps are still on the device or not (there might be some apps that you use very infrequently, but they're nice to have when you need them), and if they've been deleted, going through the App Store to find them again can be a pain.
"Amazon has a Cloud/Device set of tabs" that could be useful for this, Torres said. "Or something sort of like Dropbox's system, where if you star something, it gets stored locally. I would like for all apps to have a standardized way of showing you this, so you're always clear on what's in the phone and what's in the cloud." Torres thinks this should apply beyond apps, though—he thinks it should also apply to data stored within each app, and that third-party developers should work with Apple to come up with a more standard way to show whether documents are local, on iCloud, or stored somewhere else.
