Imagine life without internet. Speculations are rife that there would be an internet shutdown from Monday. The malware DNS Changer has been identified as the cause of the impending internet shutdown. The malware was constantly used by cyber criminals who had been accessing confidential data pan world. Going by snatches of reports about the imminent shutdown, including posts on social networking sites, some internet service providers (ISPs) have sent notices to their users about the potential threat. If the threat becomes real, some people in the city could lose their internet service from Monday unless they do a quick check on their systems and remove the malware with help from ISP. Users whose computers are infected as of Monday would lose their ability to go online. They will have to call their ISP for help in deleting the malware and reconnecting to the internet. Most victims don’t even know their computers have been infected, although the malicious software probably has slowed their web surfing and disabled their antivirus software, making their machines more vulnerable to other problems. The FBI caught a few members of the group late last year. However, the threat of the malware still persists. The malware is a malicious computer program which hides itself on the system and operates under various entities. Hackers have used it to commit frauds online. The malicious software, or malware, is virtually undetectable for the user. It works by redirecting the user’s internet requests through another web server, before going to the desired web site. In doing so, the user is exposed to some “pay- per - click” advertising, which has netted the hackers an estimated $14 million. To stop spread of the DNS Changer malware and associated viruses and to prevent it from affecting more computers, the FBI has brought out a mechanism through which one can identify if the computer is infected or not. The deadline set by the FBI was July 9, 2012. Computers infected with the DNS Changer as of July 9 will be denied internet access, as the FBI might shut down temporary DNS Servers that are infected. Experts say more than 300,000 computers remained infected as of June 11. The largest number of infected computers were in the United States (69,000), but more than a dozen countries -- including Italy, Germany, India, Britain, Canada, France and Australia -- are also believed to have infected computers. The infected computers will continuously show ‘Page not found error’. To check if the computer is infected or not one can log on to http://dns-ok.us if the screen shows green colour the There is no need to panic. Just install the anti-virus before Monday and you will be able to access the internet again, The Hans India, ***
