DNS Changer Malware
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There have been a number of scare stories in the past,
remember the millennium bug which promised to bring down every computer
in the world, but this one seems far more plausible.
The notification came through the FBI in the USA and has the potential
to bring down the entire internet. This would dwarf any attempts so far
to disrupt business worldwide.
This bug affects only Windows and Mac machines (at the moment) Linux,
android and IOS are ok. Essentially this Trojan infects machines and
alters the way that computers resolve internet addresses.
When you type in a web address, for example
www.quality-matters.com DNS servers look up the internet
reference, in this case it resolves it to 92-15-193-76 and connects the
user to our web-site The bug changes the way this is done and directs
the user to a criminals web site It may be that the site looks similar
to the original and in the case of financial institutions will prompt
the user for username and password The bug also disables antivirus and
anti malware software so that the user is pretty defenceless.
The FBI have arrested a number of the criminals (Six Estonian
Nationals) already and have used their own resources to set up web
addresses that the criminals have used.;
Will this affect me? There is a way to test your own system to see if
it is infected.
Type in www.dns-ok.us.
If your machine is OK then it will show a green background; if not it
will be red.
There is additional information available at http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/november/malware_110911.
The one thing I haven’t mentioned yet is the date on which this will
all happen;
MARK THIS DATE IN YOUR DIARIES 9 July 2012.
Let us hope that it was all a hyped up issue and the date
passes without incident. I am prepared – are you?
About the Author
Chris Eden FIBC, MISSA, ACQI is a director of Quality
Matters Limited an established independent management consultancy based
in Essex, UK which specialises in ISO27001 Information Security
Management consultancy.
Follow us @Scopulus_News
Article Published/Sorted/Amended on Scopulus 2012-07-08 21:43:26 in Computer Articles
