An epic Internet #FAIL Blog (post):
And a little birdie otherwise known as Twitter, informed me of the latest glitch in the matrix...
"Hackers infected a network of probably more than 570,000 computers worldwide. They took advantage of vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Windows operating system to install malicious software on the victim computers. This turned off antivirus updates and changed the way the computers reconcile website addresses behind the scenes on the Internet's domain name system. The DNS system is a network of servers that translates a web address - such as www.ap.org - into the numerical addresses that computers use. Victim computers were reprogrammed to use rogue DNS servers owned by the attackers. This allowed the attackers to redirect computers to fraudulent versions of any website. Read more"
The FBI arrested six hackers from Estonia; all involved in the Internet scam which left 568,000 computers affected by malware. Since their arrests in November 2011, the agency began the work of repairing by "installing and running substitute" servers in order to reroute computers back to authentic DNS/sites.
However, restoring the overall integrity of the Internet is costly and time consuming. Thus far, the FBI successfully rerouted 208,000 computers - of which 85,000 are in the United States, according to federal authorities. Of course, there's 360,000 computer left to be rerouted behind schedule. March was their original deadline. It is now April.
In New York, a federal judge granted an extension until July 9, 2012. Hence, the looming "Losing Internet Service in July?" catchphrases you've been seeing lately. In order to facilitate this massive DNS overhaul, the FBI has posted a website (www.dcwg.org) via one of its security partners, that end users can use themselves in order to detect whether or not their computer(s) has been affected. And if so, the site has the capability to fix the issue. Therefore, the FBI is encouraging people to take advantage of the site. If you're computer doesn't have it's DNS act together by July... then quite frankly, you're just SOL. At first, it sounds like something straight out of one of Bill Gate's geeky nightmares.... and I was skeptical of its validity. After researching the topic, it seems legit. So, for my fellow skeptics and those whom [understandably] wish to avoid government interference as much as possible; Norton Internet Security also detects DNS changes. According to a statement from one of Norton's community forum leaders, there is no need to run a security scan from the FBI's website if you are already using their Anti Virus/Internet Security software: http://community.norton.com/t5/Norton-Internet-Security-Norton/Will-Lose-Internet-in-July/m-p/701503/highlight/true#M201451.
Happy surfing!
