300,000 Infected Computers to Go Offline Monday

Folks, I am sorry for alerting you so late, but I myself was unaware that this critical situation existed. shame on me i should say.

Anyway, for those  of you checking this blog today and tomorrow there is still time to avoid the problem.

Please be aware and  [relieved], that not all computers are in danger, but you never know.

The following explains the situation in detail:

The culprit is a virus called DNSChanger which at one point, infected  as many as 4 million PCs and Macs . This malware, earned its makers as much as  $14 million, U.S. federal authorities have said.

FBI has been warning people that a blackout of their access to the Internet could be coming. The warnings about the Internet problem have been splashed across Facebook and Google, and Internet service providers have sent notices as well. But tens of thousands of Americans may still lose their Internet service Monday unless they do a quick check of their computers for malware that could have taken over their machines more than a year ago.

Infected machines will lose their link to the Internet at 12:01 a.m. ET Monday, July 9, when replacement DNS servers go dark. The servers, which have been maintained under a federal court order by Internet Systems Consortium (ISC), the non-profit group that maintains the popular BIND DNS open-source software, were deployed last year after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) seized more than 100 command-and-control (C&C) systems during the take-down of the hacker gang responsible for DNSChanger.

PCWorld has advised that Despite repeated alerts, the number of computers that probably are infected is more than 277,000 worldwide, down from about 360,000 in April. Of those still infected, the FBI believes that about 64,000 are in the United States. Users whose computers are still infected Monday will lose their ability to go online, and they will have to call their service providers for help deleting the malware and and reconnecting to the Internet.

There are  steps available that will allow you to check if your computer is infected and if so how to safely clean it up:

To check whether a computer is infected, users can visit a website run by the group brought in by the FBI: http://www.dcwg.org. This link also provides resources for how to “disinfect” your computer should the malware be found on it.

Click on the following link, (if it does not work, just copy and paste to you browser):

http://www.dcwg.org

The other method which will tell you if your computer is infected is to go to:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/258843/300000_infected_computers_to_go_offline_monday.html#tk.nl_dnx_h_crawl

This will open a page where all of the above is explained in detail and also shows a color display under the title "DNS Changer Check Up". If the background color is green, your computer is OK, however if it is infected, the background color will be red.

The odds for your computer to be infected are relatively small, but you never know.

Good luck to you all. This is very urgent and please do the checking and if necessary the repair immediately. The Web page dcwg.org outlined above has all the tools to do the job quickly.

Sorry for being so late in warning you, but I (shame on me), did know this threat  existed until late last night.

George Freire