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| If your computer is infected, the DNS changer check-up site will look like this |
280,000 computers are infected with malware that will cause their internet to shut down on Monday, July 9, 2012 if they don't remove the virus immediately. This is becoming a huge deal all over the internet, with sites like Facebook and Google posting warning messages to users who they detect have the virus. How did this all start?
Last year, international hackers set up an online advertising scam. When these ads were clicked on, the hackers would gain control of these computers by hooking them up wirelessly to malicious servers. The servers turned off anti-virus protection and other installed software on the infected computers, slowing down their internet and making them prone to even worse viruses. Luckily, the FBI found out about this, and set off to take down the hackers.
However, they realized that there was an important problem; if the FBI simply turned off the malicious servers, about 400,000 infected computers would lose internet connection. So, the FBI hired a private company to set up two clean temporary internet servers to replace these malicious servers.
But these servers will expire on July 9 at 12:01 a.m. So the 280,000 computers that were infected and are still connected to these servers will instantly lose internet connection. And this is a bigger deal than it may seem; it is estimated that 50 Fortune 500 computers are infected with this virus, and therefore will lose internet connection.
The FBI recommends that everybody check to see if their computer is infected with this virus by going on http://www.dns-ok.us/, which will detect if your computer is infected with this virus. If it is, DCWG (The FBI's site on this problem) has links to fix your computer so you won't lose connection.
