Malware may knock thousands off Internet on Monday

http://www.dcwg.org .

What is the DNS Changer Malware?

On November 8, the FBI, the NASA-OIG and Estonian police arrested several cyber criminals in “Operation Ghost Click”. The criminals operated under the company name “Rove Digital”, and distributed DNS changing viruses, variously known as TDSS, Alureon, TidServ and TDL4 viruses. You can read more about the arrest of the Rove Digital principals here, and in the FBI Press Release.

What does the DNS Changer Malware do?

The botnet operated by Rove Digital altered user DNS settings, pointing victims to malicious DNS in data centers in Estonia, New York, and Chicago. The malicious DNS servers would give fake, malicious answers, altering user searches, and promoting fake and dangerous products. Because every web search starts with DNS, the malware showed users an altered version of the Internet.

Under a court order, expiring July 9, the Internet Systems Consortium is operating replacement DNS servers for the Rove Digital network. This will allow affected networks time to identify infected hosts, and avoid sudden disruption of services to victim machines.

How Can I Protect Myself?

This page describes how you can determine if you are infected, and how you can clean infected machines. To check if you’re infected, Click Here. If you believe you are infected, here are instructions on how to clean your computer.

DNSChanger, a piece of malware that re-routed vast swaths of Internet traffic through rogue DNS servers after users became infected, was shut down by the FBI late last year. But simply shutting down the servers altogether would have ‘broken’ many hundreds of thousands of computers still infected–rendering it difficult for them to get help via the Internet–so the FBI and ISC orchestrated a temporary fix, which is set to end on July 9th. This temporary fix has allowed infected computers to stay connected, but that’s coming to a close.

Now Google has rolled out a program to notify people when it detects that their computer is trying to reach those temporary DNS servers. If you use Google Search that will trigger the detection process and a message will appear saying that “you might be infected” if Google detects those temporary DNS servers. This mesage could be confusing because you might have thought you had disinfected your machine. So is it possible to have your computer only ‘halfway fixed?’ (continue reading …)

http://tech.ca.msn.com/malware-may-knock-thousands-off-internet-on-monday-4