WannaCrypt0r Ransomware: Plunging The World Into Chaos

We all know of the dangers of NSA's leaked exploits could do if it was to ever fall into the wrong hands. But no one could have predicted the trouble it would cause, well at least for the non-tech person anyway. On Friday, news reports of the NHS being attacked by the ransomware ran across the country with people being turned away from hospitals and patients being unable to be discharge, plunging the NHS into Chaos. But the UK wasn't alone, at this point the ransomware was doing some damage in Asia with Japan and China being attacked by the malware too.

But the worst hit appears to be from Russia and European countries such as France and Spain, but the US delivery service FedEx have also been effected. The WannaCrypt0r Ransomware is typical malware which encrypts all or at least important data on your computer. Mostly encrypts anything depending on the type of file it may be looking for, like MP4 or docx for example. Once the data has been encrypted you would be prompt with instructions telling you will need to pay up or say goodbye to your data.

Nice isn't it?

With the clock counting down you would have three options. One: Pay them in Bitcoin and hope your data is unlocked (buyers beware), Two: Panic and try to download some sort of program which promises to get your data back (Don't, this could cause the ransomeware to encrypted everything forever). Three: Get out an external USB hard drive and perform a backup and restore to the newest system image you have saved. Doing this for a home computer is pretty easy, doing this for a organisation is probably a nightmare. Let's not forget those who have been attacked: NHS, FedEx, Telefonica, Renault and among others may still be using older version of Windows. (Oh joy! Since it only effects Windows Systems)

Now I understand the need to stick with older version of OS's, a company may need to use certain software which may not be supported by newer versions of a OS. But in doing so, you can increase the danger of being attacked or hijacked if your computer or system is connected to the internet. Even if your older systems are discounted from the internet, it can only take a infected USB flash drive to cause all types of problems, I'm looking at you Stuxnet! So what's going to happen next? Well hopefully lessons can be learned but I'm quite doubtful this will cause much change.

WannaMakeYouCry!

Microsoft have come to the rescue by issuing an emergency patch for Windows XP. Seen as a unusual step for the tech giant for some since this was the same company trying so hard to make all Windows users use Windows 10. There has also been another hero in the mist of this madness and chaos. A UK blogger named MalwareTech spent £8 on a web address the ransomware was trying to contact. Once MalwareTech had full control of the web address, it allowed the blogger to find a kill switch to stop it from spreading. That's the really short version anyway, the long version can be found here. However know this doesn't fix the problem for the computer's who have already been infected by the ransomware, but at least the spread has been stopped for now.

WannaCrypt Attack Map: MalwareTech

While the recovery begins for many of the organisations effected by WannaCrypt0r, questions will be asked why we are still not updating our systems when we should be and why we allow older systems to be connected onto the internet. Let's all see how this turns out in the meantime and how badly effected these organisation are.

♦

Xperia Z: The Phone you can use in the shower!

Xperia Z is a new smartphone from Sony but it has features unlike no other smartphone there is on the market. The Xperia Z has a stamina mode which Sony has said that it has double battery life and one-touch connectivity that links to your HiFi. But it's main feature is water resistance and can work under water up to 30 minutes. It can work in the shower and have a dip in the toilet or give it a quick rinse if it's a bit dirty. 

But we all have are limits and then phone does as well. The Xperia Z is only water resistant around the depths of one metre. So you won't be able to do any deep sea diving calls then. Of course people who own the phone must make sure that the plastic covers protect the phone's charging and connection ports when the Xperia Z is under water.

The Xperia Z has a 5-inch 1080p high definition screen and has a quad-core processor and the Xperia Z camera is 13-megapixels. This smartphone is available for pre-order in February. So far Sony has not given out the price of the Xperia Z. Sony making another version called the Xperia ZL but the ZL won't be coming to England anytime soon.

Father hired gamers to 'kill' his son on Online Games

Mr Feng a feather from China was unhappy with the amount of time his twenty-three year old son was spending on computer games. The son is unemployed, so Mr Feng hired virtual assassins to hunt down his son online and to kill his character. By doing this Mr Feng hoped that his son would be part off from playing games online since he would be getting killed all the time. Mr Feng ''son'' ask why there where targeting him.

It has been said by his feather that his son got terrible grades in school because of his gaming addiction. And his son couldn't find a job he ''liked'' doing. And with that Mr Feng began to search for the ''Hitman'' who would kill his son character online. So do you think your son spends too much time online? Do you think this was the right way to deal with someone's gaming addiction? Comment now!

Nvidia Project Shield Gaming Console

Nvidia came out with the Project Shield Gaming Console at CES 2013. But what is Project Shield? Project Shield is a Android-based touch-screen with two joysticks with other buttons in a clam like design. (Should of been made by Shell) But one thing you can't do on a PSVita or a 3DS is with Project Shield you can link it to your PC to offer access to more and powerful games on the Steam library. Jen-Hsun Huang didn't reveal a reveal a release date or price for Project Shield, for now he showed everyone a working prototype.

To get a ideal of it's size the Project Shield is bigger then a Xbox 360 controller. It's screen resolution is about 720p and it's said to be capable of playing games and videos in 4k standard. This is a big move for Nvidia and only time will tell if the move was the right way to go. Consoles like the PSVita and 3DS haven't done to well due to the growth of gaming on tablets and smartphone. 

Goodbye PlayStation 2

Sony now stops production of the PlayStation 2! The PlayStation 2 first went on sale on March 2000 in Japan and since then more then 150 million PlayStation 2 consoles have been sold. Even when the PlayStation 3 was released the PlayStation 2 was still out selling the new console. It's said to be about 11,000 games out for the PlayStation 2.

The most sold game was Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas which sold around 17.33 million copies and is said to be the best Grand Theft Auto ever!

But people are starting to ask if Sony are only doing this so there can get more resources towards the PlayStation 4. Will soon find out when Sony will make announcements about the PlayStation 4 sometime in 2013. My guess it will be E3 but who knows?

Posting again!

I've been really busy last year but I still wanted to make this blog. I wanted to post technology news and give my views on what was going on in the world of technology. So I started ''The Warzone'' which is this blog but now the name has change to ''The Gigabyte'' which in my view is far better! But after sometime I began to stop posting which I feel bad about. But why did I stop posting? Was it too hard? Did I even care if anyone read this blog?

Well I tell you now... A lot of things happened in 2012 (Good and Bad) I had a online forum about video games but was betrayed by my best friend who kick me off the forum and pretty much rained everything. Of course he has been removed and I'm no longer friends with him. Another thing I was working on was my YouTube channel which for the first time that year I was recording with a capture card which I spent all summer to get my videos the best quality I could. I set up a WordPress blog which is a blog about everything I do and about my life unlike this blog.

With all this and starting collage I found it hard to keep track on everything and being betrayed meant I had ''other'' things to deal with. But now it's 2013 and I hope it is going to be a better year for me and my blogs and other accounts. And now I hope to post more on this blog as well. So yes I am now posting again!

Thanks for reading! 

Goodbye Gougou.com

Gougou.com was one of China's pirate content search engines. Until it closed down. Before it closed down it was blacklisted by the US for carrying a lot of pirate content. The funny thing is... Xunlei (Chinese Web Firm) who wanted the search engine to be listed in US stock exchange, but that didn't happen because of last year due to piracy concerns.

So this could be attempt to float bids on the US stock exchange again but no one knows for sure. Gougou.com is in a list of major copyright offenders from the US Trade Representatives. The US Trade Representatives said ''This Chinese-based site facilitates the downloading and distribution of pirated music and movies, not only through deep-linking services, but also by offering cyberlocker facilities and through its own innovative high-speed P2P (peer-to-peer) file-sharing system''

''Gougou.com has been closed down. Thank you all you for all your support, and we are sorry for any inconvenience''

Facebook is down and back up again!

Facebook is down. Since the website went offline everyone has been reporting it onto Twitter. #Facebookfail is now the newest trend on Twitter thanks to Facebook. Right now it is also the most talk about. But why has Facebook gone down? It appears it had some DNS issues. Right now know Facebook has just got it self back up since it is now online. But I thought this would be a bit of a empty post but why not put some tweets of the #Facebookfail. Enjoy and stay here for more news of Facebook here on ''The Gigabyte'. 

The Tweets of #Facebookfail

''For those who live on Facebook, the end of the world has arrived early.''

''Mark Zuckerberg: "Okay, let me tell you the difference between Facebook and everyone else, we don't crash EVER!''

''The worse thing about Facebook being down is that I can't update my status to let all my friends know that Facebook is down''

''….and this is why Twitter is soooo much better!''

''You. Have. No. Friends''

Also Anonymous have been tweeting that Gmail and Xbox Live are not working for some. I think the internet is going to crash! :P

Want Black Ops 2 for Free? Then torrent it!

''You want #BlackOps2? Pirate that shit! Don't buy a game that suggests #Anonymous is a terrorist organization''

 ''Torrent: Call of Duty #BlackOps2 for PS3''

 Tweets from Anonymous

  Yep someone has put Call of Duty Black ops 2 up on the webs for the world to torrent. Oh what a world we live in. Of course if you want to get to the game by the torrent feel free to check up on Anonymous tweets. There is also rumors of a up coming hack for the game but this of course is just a rumor. News of the Black Ops 2 torrent will be posted here on The Gigabyte!

Anonymous last tweet.

 #BlackOps2 Expect Us.

From Warzone to Gigabyte

The Warzone has now change over to The Gigabyte. The slogan has also change over to ''All your technology news... byte sized''. The reason for the change of names is because the warzone didn't feel right for a blog about technology news. I also hope to make an newsletter called ”The Terabyte Post” which will be given who subscribe to the blog. Anyway I hope to post more news later on soon. Sorry if this change has cased any problems. Also the domain has change over to http://bytesizedinfo.blogspot.co.uk.

For more news about the change click here. From Warzone to Gigabyte Info

World of Warcraft Apocalypse begins with major cities hacked and players die!

Hackers have appeared to have created a character which is able to destroy those of other players and those controlled by the game. Blizzard Activision which made the game said "This exploit has already been hot-fixed, so it should not be repeatable." ''Where taking the action very seriously". He also said ''Earlier today, certain realms were affected by an in-game exploit, resulting in the deaths of player characters and non-player characters in some of the major cities,"

Around about 10 million subscribers play World of Warcraft and is said most of them are from China. No one knows how this has happend yet but Blizzard hope to find out very soon.

All there wanted to do is just buy some new amour. But the only thing there brought was death!

Once this town center was peaceful but now it is only a grave yard to players.

 This You Tuber records the hack game.