4 million computers were hacked worldwide, and it seems that the hackers were caught. Looks like they were using ad ware and malware to do some of the damage. They got in some systems you wouldn't think they should, pretty scary.
http://news.yahoo.com/feds-cyber-criminals-hijacked-4-million-computers-184840508.html
Actually, the report is complete nonsense. None of these computers were hacked. It was DNS servers outside that were hacked.
When you type in for example "www.apple.com" in Safari, Safari will ask your ISP's DNS server "where is www.apple.com", the DNS server will tell it, and then Safari sens any request to Apple's server. In this case someone managed to hack the DNS server. So when Safari asked "where is www.apple.com" it was told the location of the hackers' server.
That is why you only ever type in sensitive information when your connection is using https. In that case, Safari will ask the server on the other side for a certificate that proves that it is actually
www.apple.com. The hackers can redirect Safari to another server, but they cannot forge that certificate.
And the "websites of institutions like iTunes, Amazon, and the IRS" were not hacked. In the scenario above, Safari never, ever talked to iTunes, or Amazon, and so on. It only talked to the hackers' server.
