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Sunday, July 08, 2012

DNS Changer malware to strike tomorrow

Posted by Jim Bernstein


The latest security threat to potentially affect thousands of computer users is called DNS Changer and it’s expected to unleash itself on Monday, June 9th. This malware infection was created by a group of Estonian criminals.

According to the FBI, this group of cybercriminals designed the malware to redirect users computers from the DNS servers their computers normally use to search the internet to rogue servers crated by the group. So if you are searching for a HP monitor for example you might be redirected to a fraudulent site that appears to be selling the same product. This infection affects around 275,000 computers worldwide according to the FBI.

The FBI and the Internet Systems Consortium have provided a temporary fix, re-re-routing the fraudulent traffic. During this period, your ISP was supposed to contact you and inform you if your computer was among the affected. The temporary fix will be shut off on Monday which means users whose ISP’s haven’t informed them of the infection may be off to a rough work week. A simple test is to go to http://www.dns-ok.us/ and it will tell you if your computer is resolving internet names correctly. There are other tests you can find online as well but just be sure they are from legitimate sources.


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