possible slew of unhappiness comming - fbi and internet

[SteeleDragon78]

found this this morning. sadly i foresee trouble looming for our friends in call centers and the IT boys and girls.

[Geek King]

If this is what I think, the fix is actually pretty easy for most users: Go in and turn the proxy server back off. Just a quick click of the correct check box. Then virus scan the machine to kill what it installed.

Of course, there are always the "special" users who will require an hour to talk through what is a five-minute call for the average user.

[lordlundar]

Hmm, a chron virus. Haven't seen one of those in a few years.

I was actually infected with one several years ago. Little bastard was a two stage job. First stage functioned as a traditional virus (aka corrupting files and garbage) but piggybacked on the virus scanner to spread. Stage 2 would occur on the anniversary of the Chernobyl accident where every infected file would be wiped out, utterly destroying any content on the hard drive.

I had 2 days to clean it out and it took 8 hours in the middle of the night. I was an unhappy camper.

[ohsobitter]

Our local news had the same article, but they did give a website to go to if you wanted to check your PC.


To check and clean computers, try: http://www.dcwg.org .

The full article is:

http://www.wcpo.com/dpp/news/science...ternet-in-july

[PepperElf]

fbi and internet

*MOD EDIT - Merged duplicate topic threads

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/...ernet-in-july/

i might be wrong but what it seems to be saying is that... the government had a "safety net" of computers working to help people get online - preventing internet outages for those who were infected by an online advertising scam.

but the program is going to be stopped so... those who are infected won't be able to get online.


according to the article you can go to http://www.dcwg.org/ to see if you're infected. however when i tried it... the site was "Service Unavailable. Please try again later." I guess it crashed from everyone trying to click. !


anyway heads up i guess if you can't get online in july

[Pedersen]

That was a singularly *bad* article on this problem. I've been aware of it due to the geek news sites I read, and that article ... I've read and seen worse technology stories. Usually, though, they're limited to movies like The Net.

A quick under the covers tutorial for people to help this make sense: Computers don't know names. They know numbers. They use something called "DNS" to translate names (like www.customerssuck.com) into a number called an IP address, and use that number to communicate with other computers. There, tutorial done.

The crime ring that was busted had set up their own DNS servers, and used those servers to redirect users selectively. For instance, if you wanted to visit your bank's website, it would actually go through their servers, and you would never know. This let them capture all kinds of data that allowed a wide range of computer crime.

The special trick is they couldn't do it all the time. They had to let the users hit the real site, or the user would figure out they had some sort of virus/trojan/malware of some variety, and get the machine cleaned up.

The FBI busted the crime ring, but then couldn't take down those DNS servers. If they did, then the people whose machines are infected can't contact those servers, and won't be able to get to any websites any more. DNS would be broken for them, effectively breaking the entire internet for them.

The government has been debating when to shut these rogue DNS servers off for a long time. A few deadlines for it have come and gone. The servers are still up. Despite that, this looks to be the last time the deadline will be extended. Computer professionals everywhere, be ready. You're going to get a lot of calls from panicked family members. Good luck.

[Ironclad Alibi]

To check and clean computers, try: http://www.dcwg.org.

At first I got a "Service unavailable. Try again later." message. I refreshed the web page a few times and finally got through. The same thing happened with the test link. But I was able to find out I'm clean.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

I just ran mine a couple of moments ago and got a GREEN.

I also went into my FF options as a precaution and unchecked the "let system detect proxy" under advanced - network - connection tab.

So far my laptop seems fine.

[tropicsgoddess]

Checked mine and I'm in the green!!!