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Three hundred thousand people could lose web access today as the FBI plans to shut down servers they seized from cyber-criminals at the end of last year.
A piece of malware called DNSChanger is responsbile. It was used to direct users to servers controlled by cyber-criminals, for ad hi-jacking and other purposes.
The FBI announced criminal indictments and seized the servers last November. It then worked with a non-profit agency to set up temporary clean DNS servers to help out those people affected by the malware – but today on July 9th they are turning off those temporary servers. When this happens, affected machines will no longer be able to resolve DNS numbers to connect to websites.
According to the DNS Changer Working Group, the original four million infected machines are, have been reduced to 300,00 after a campaign to increase awareness of the malware. But that’s still an awful lot of people affected – perhaps up to 20,000 of them in the UK.
You can check here if your machine is affected.
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