Very few malware campaigns measure up against the Yahoo Search redirect plot that haunts Macs on a big scale and makes a mess of Safari settings.
The Mac territory is a far cry from being the famous walled garden that it used to be. It has loopholes that make various forms of exploitation possible, including surreptitious malware infiltration through application bundling schemes. This tactic is most heavily parasitized by adware and adjacent strains such as browser hijackers and popup viruses. A prime example of the former category is the Yahoo Search redirect, a threat that quietly installs itself on a Mac and operates with a focus on tweaking the victim’s Safari customizations. The default settings in Chrome, Mozilla, and other popular browsers typically undergo adverse changes as well.
Here is all you need to know about SearchBaron, a browser hijacker that has infected numerous Macs over the past two years and is still going strong in 2021.
The landscape of harmful programs zeroing in on Mac computers is home to a diverse range of strains. But, it is dominated by adware. These little digital villains aren’t insanely harmful or anything like that, but they are extraordinarily irritating to deal with and difficult to remove. The sample referred to as SearchBaron has earned a spot in this shadowy ecosystem, and for good reason. It surfaced in the summer of 2019 as what seemed to be just one of many viruses forming the massive Bing redirect campaign, but the volume of traffic it was generating at its dawn made it stand out from the crowd. Things got worse last year when SearchBaron burst out with innumerable infections.
This is an update concerning our tutorial we wrote almost 2 years ago : read here
Since March 2009, new “Wave 3″ games appeared, and since August 2009, new “Wave 4″ games. With the iXtreme firmware we installed, we could not boot those 2 types of games anymore. We need to update the iXtreme firmware of our XBOX 360 DVD drive!
QuickPwn (It allows you to instantly jailbreak your iPhone and activate it if required. This new tool is very useful for those who do not need to unlock their iPhone. It is much quicker than PwnageTool and does not require restoring firmware. Follow our tutorial to instantly jailbreak your device with QuickPwn.
Warning: If you have a 3G iPhone and you need to unlock it, stay away from this method. It will update the baseband of your iPhone which may render it unlockable in the future when a solution comes out. You have been warned. Only for 3G legit users.
Click on the link above to read the tutorial.
As you might have noticed, the tool is made for windows. If you are running a mac, get Parallels or VMWare Fusion and install Windows.
Before you start you need to update your iPhone to the latest 2.0.2 firmware via iTunes. You will need iTunes 7.7.1, be sure you have the latest iTunes version or it won’t work. Connect your iPhone to iTunes and sync it first, iTunes will create a backup. Then you can hit the update button to install the latest 2.0.2 firmware. Remember QuickPwn will activate (if required) and jailbreak, but not unlock. Do not use QuickPwn if you need to unlock your iPhone.
Also if you were running *free* cracked iPhone apps, they won’t launch after the 2.0.2 update until you jailbreak your device with Pwnage. Let’s do this!
Fire up QuickPwnGui120.exe and select your type of device:
Click next and browse to the Apple’s 2.0.2 firmware you downloaded here
Click next once you selected the right firmware (2.0, 2.0.1 and 2.0.2 are supported):
Next select if you want Cydia, Installer and custom logo to be installed :
Click the GO button and follow the instructions in the command-line windows :
If you are running in a virtual machine like me, connect your iPhone to the VM. I am using Parallels, so I had to click on the usb icon in the lower right corner:
Hit the GO button and you should see a command-line window. Wait until you get the following message:
Turn off your iPhone and hit enter once it is done. You’ll get this screen :
Next you will need to enter DFU mode, just follow the instructions on the screen above. You should see that windows detected the phone in DFU mode:
If you are running Windows in a virtual machine, you might be stuck at this screen:
If it happens, just pull out usb cable and plug it back in (ghetto usb reset – thx planetbeing). Also if iTunes pops up in your mac native OS, just quit it. The process in the command line window should resume. Wait until the end, your iPhone should reboot. Do not care about the pineapple logo. If you choose not to update logos, they won’t be updated, trust me.
Once rebooted your are (h)ac(k)tivated and jailbreaked. Enjoy!
Since iPhone firmware 2.0, Installer app was not able to run anymore. And the same issue happened to your favorite homebrew applications.
Today, Installer is back on the iPhone 2.0 with their 4.0 beta 2 version. If you can’t wait until the final release, we have the Installer 4 for you to test.
Download it
Installation instructions follow.
– Upload Installer.app to the /Applications directory on your iPhone. Use any SFTP client (user:root, password:alpine) – Connect to your iPhone with an SSH client Prefer putty for windows or Terminal for mac – Execute the following commands: chmod -R 777 /Applications/Installer.app chmod a+srx /Applications/Installer.app/Installer – Reboot iPhone
There are 2 methods to install *free* games on your IPhone, both requires jailbroken iPhone. The method we will explain is the easiest one. It does not require patching your iPhone.
– Update your iPhone to firmware 2.0 with Pwnage 2.0, use our straightforward guide. It’s important that your iPhone is Jailbroken, and that you have installed Cydia Installer.
– Fire up Cydia, and install OpenSSH. It will allow you to connect to your iPhone. Next you will need an ftp client that handles SFTP protocol. We recommend Transmit for Mac users or CoreFTP for Windows users.
– Connect your iPhone to your wifi home network, and check the assigned IP address. Fire up your FTP client, and connect to your iPhone IP address with the following user:
User : root Password : alpine
– Get the IPA files (google is your friend) Rename the extension IPA to ZIP and extract the content. You’ll find the XXXX.app in the Payload folder.
– Browse to the /Applications directory and upload the XXXX.app
– You will need to set the correct permissions on the apps folder in /Applications Apply permissions 775 with your ftp client to the folder you added under /Applications
– Create a folder called “Documents” in /Applications and /private/var/Mobile This is a one time process, if the Documents folder already exist, leave it skip to next step
– You will need to set the correct permissions on the 2 “Documents” folder you created Apply permissions 777 with your ftp client.
– Reboot your iPhone and the *free* apps should appear on your iPhone.
Alternative method:
This method will allow you install *free* cracked IPA files through iTunes. It requires that you replace a framework with a patched one.
– Connect to your iPhone with SSH, user root, password alpine – Go to folder /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileInstallation.framework – Backup the MobileInstallation binary : cp -r MobileInstallation MobileInstallation.bak – Connect with SFTP and upload the patched MobileInstallation – Set permissions : chmod 775 MobileInstallation – Reboot the iPhone
Double-Click the IPA files to import them in iTunes. Then simply Sync your applications with iPhone.
Important note : Use this method only to evaluate apps before you buy them. Developers spent lot of time working on their applications, respect their work. Stealing apps may lower their quality for future releases.
Today is the day, you gotta love sundays! After many, many cryptic messages on the dev team blog, they finally decided it’s stable enough to release it! The new Pwnage tool 2.0 is out. It will activate, unlock and jailbreak your 2G iPhone, and “jailbreak only” your new 3G iPhone. No 3G unlock yet!
Pwnage has a very nice interface, but nevertheless it’s still a bit complicated to use if you have no idea what you are doing. Therefore, to help you pwn your iPhone, we wrote a very detailled guide. We are glad to see many of you already succeeded with our tutorial.
