raygun Posted April 21, 2012 Share Posted April 21, 2012 King5.com: Hundreds of thousands may lose Internet in July Associated Press Posted on April 20, 2012 at 12:01 PM Updated today at 4:01 PM WASHINGTON (AP) — For computer users, a few mouse clicks could mean the difference between staying online and losing Internet connections this summer. Unknown to most of them, their problem began when international hackers ran an online advertising scam to take control of infected computers around the world. In a highly unusual response, the FBI set up a safety net months ago using government computers to prevent Internet disruptions for those infected users. But that system is to be shut down. The FBI is encouraging users to visit a website run by its security partner, http://www.dcwg.org , that will inform them whether they're infected and explain how to fix the problem. After July 9, infected users won't be able to connect 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. Last November, the FBI and other authorities were preparing to take down a hacker ring that had been running an Internet ad scam on a massive network of infected computers. "We started to realize that we might have a little bit of a problem on our hands because ... if we just pulled the plug on their criminal infrastructure and threw everybody in jail, the victims of this were going to be without Internet service," said Tom Grasso, an FBI supervisory special agent. "The average user would open up Internet Explorer and get 'page not found' and think the Internet is broken." On the night of the arrests, the agency brought in Paul Vixie, chairman and founder of Internet Systems Consortium, to install two Internet servers to take the place of the truckload of impounded rogue servers that infected computers were using. Federal officials planned to keep their servers online until March, giving everyone opportunity to clean their computers. But it wasn't enough time. A federal judge in New York extended the deadline until July. Now, said Grasso, "the full court press is on to get people to address this problem." And it's up to computer users to check their PCs. ... When the FBI and others arrested six Estonians last November, the agency replaced the rogue servers with Vixie's clean ones. Installing and running the two substitute servers for eight months is costing the federal government about $87,000. ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raygun Posted April 23, 2012 Author Share Posted April 23, 2012 $87,000 is a lot of money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rokke Posted April 23, 2012 Share Posted April 23, 2012 Typical Federal Government efficiency. If you click on the DCWG link, more times than not you get a message saying the service is unavailable. It has probably already been compromised and instead of helping you, plants a virus in your computer that makes you further dependent on the government. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Casino67 Posted April 23, 2012 Share Posted April 23, 2012 I clicked on it yesterday and it seemed to work ok. Was worried that it would do more harm than good though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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