DNSChanger Trojan; How to Save Your Computer From July 9 Internet Blackout?

What is DNSChanger Malware?

DNSChanger malware spells ‘Internet Doomsday’… The end is nigh, according to the FBI and this ‘Internet doomsday’ will strike us all on July 9… But it all started back in 2007. A small group of scammers were busy infecting computers with a type of malware called DNSChanger, with a great success rate. DNSChanger was able to travel from computer to computer, infecting them and thus putting them under the control of the scammers. This growing network of infected computers is known as a botnet.

In 2011, over 3 years after the scam started, the FBI – working with the Estonian police – caught the scammers in an operation called “Operation Ghost Click”. By this time the scammers accumulated over £8million ($14mil) and had infected millions of computers! When the FBI detected the infection by DNSChanger malware they set up safety surrogate servers to ensure the infected PCs continued working – but as the cost of that seems to be too high they are planning to ‘pull the plug’ on July 9. The clock is ticking — The FBI’s surrogate servers can run until July 8, at which point they will either have to be shut down or run by a court-ordered extension.

How to Know and What to Do If Your PC is Infected with DNS Changer Virus?

So how do you know if your computer is infected with DNSChanger? Well, fortunately that could not be any easier. Dozens of websites have been set up for potential victims. All you have to do is visit the site and it will tell you if you are infected or not, straight away. For a list of sites in various languages and locales visit the DCWG website. Once you are there, open one of the DNSChanger Testing Pages listed on the website. If you’re infected, the site will bring up a red screen telling you as much. If you’re infected it’s time to break out the latest anti-virus software you have installed and run a full system scan.

If you don’t have anti-malware software, I recommend Microsoft Security Essentials. It also doesn’t hurt to have the free version of Malwarebytes around for the occasional scan. Run scans with both programs and you should be fine, so run the above test again. Also, the FBI has been encouraging people to visit their website and find out if their system is infected and find a solution to fix it. Of the 350,000 infected machines worldwide, 85,000 are in the U.S and 20,000 are in the UK.

If you believe that you have been victimized, you are required to provide DNS information. If you are found to be infected by DNSChanger then click on the official fix page, which, in simple steps, offers to fix the problem.

Google Launching Awareness Campaign Telling Internet Users If Their PCs Are Infected By The DNS Changer Trojan

On Tuesday, May 22, Google announced it would throw its weight into the awareness campaign, rolling out alerts to users via a special message that will appear at the top of the Google search results page for users with affected computers.

The internet search-engine giant will set up alerts visible to the roughly 350,000 PC users with infected computers when they use its search results page as a warning that their machines have an invisible, undetectable ‘Trojan‘ computer virus called DNSChanger. So if you happen to see this message next time you are searching using Google, then you know you have the infection and go ahead and the above mentioned steps to get it fixed.