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Check your computer before FBI shuts down servers July 9

Atma

Extreme Android User
More than a quarter of a million PC users could find themselves cut off from the Internet on Monday as the FBI takes down a safety net protecting them from a specific piece of malicious software. Here's what the FBI wants you to know:


Q: Who does this affect?

A: Some 277,000 Windows PC users in homes and businesses worldwide, including 64,000 in the U.S. They still have not cleaned up a specific piece of malware spread to 570,000 machines more than a year ago.



Q: Why will they be cut off?

A: Last fall, FBI agents discovered
 
I'm assuming this will have little or no effect on those of us in Britain?

From what I have read its worldwide.

Google, Facebook and the FBI have all issued repeated alerts over the past year about the estimated 650,000 computers worldwide that fell victim to the DNSChanger trojan, but they and media outlets made one last public appeal this week warning of the looming July 9 deadline.


That's when the FBI will shut down the temporary DNS servers it set up to keep the virus-infected computers connected to the internet after it broke up a criminal operation that had rerouted the machines through a system of false DNS servers, manipulating users' web searches in order to direct them to fraudulent websites.


The websites promoted fake products and allowed the cybercriminals to earn money off the sale of these products and advertising.
The temporary servers, operated by the non-profit Internet Systems Consortium, were meant to keep people connected to the web until the virus was removed and the connection through their usual internet service provider was resumed.
 
From what I have read its worldwide.

I checked last night and I was in the green (good to go). I suspected I would be okay but I just had to check. Glad I switched to Ubuntu back in January...I feel more secure.

jmar
 
Daggit, why doesn't Linux get in on all the fun....those daggone Windoze Luvers...

But at work it's a different thing, but that's their problem!
 
I haven't used my ISPs DNS servers in years. I've been using OpenDNS for quite some time and have been very happy with them. Changed the IPs on my router once and now all my connections, both wired and WiFi utilize the addresses automatically.
 
Same here. The Internet didn't shun me, no dragons ate the sun, and my DNS servers don't seem to be infected with a virus.

You know what would be news? If news programs did a technology report with absolutely no hysterical hyperbole.
 
Daggit, why doesn't Linux get in on all the fun....those daggone Windoze Luvers...

But at work it's a different thing, but that's their problem!
red hat is the big time money shark now. amongst all those googles apples oracles, microsoft seems pretty modest corporate by now.
 
red hat is the big time money shark now. amongst all those googles apples oracles, microsoft seems pretty modest corporate by now.

apple and oracle have booth been around long before microsoft. Larry got pissed when he was no longer richest man in the world after "Winblows" hit the scene. It all should be open source anyways.
 
apple and oracle have booth been around long before microsoft.
You're wrong on that one. Microsoft was founded in 1975 to write a BASIC interpreter for the MITS Altair 8800. I got the same magazine that motivated Gates into action. I didn't have a rich banker for a father to give me stuff like that. Apple came a year later. Oracle (by a different name) a year after that.
 
Pretty sure the FBI would be acting illegally shutting down computers in other countries. Doesn't sound entirely true to me
 
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