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Author Topic: Hundreds of thousands loose inmternet on July 9? Heard of this?  (Read 615 times)

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Offline Mr Mannn

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Hundreds of thousands loose inmternet on July 9? Heard of this?
« on: June 07, 2012, 04:26:01 AM »
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/06/06/facebook-warns-hundreds-thousands-may-lose-internet-in-july/?intcmp=features&intcmp=features
Quote
Facebook announced Tuesday that it had joined a consortium of other companies and security experts to help alert hundreds of thousands of websurfers of a computer infection called DNSChanger that may knock their computers off the Internet 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 will be shut down July 9 -- killing connections for those people.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/06/06/facebook-warns-hundreds-thousands-may-lose-internet-in-july/?intcmp=features&intcmp=features#ixzz1x68hU9Wj

I tend to be skeptical of doom and gloom, but this was on FOX News...
Why do I need to go to an FBI site to clean my computer?
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Offline redwhit

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Re: Hundreds of thousands loose inmternet on July 9? Heard of this?
« Reply #1 on: June 07, 2012, 11:55:13 AM »
I have seen this notice posted around a couple of times in the past few months and my question was exactly the same as yours.  It doesn't seem to make sense (and it inspires my underground conspiracy theorist).

Seriously, though, the FBI isn't the agency tasked with computer mischief, is it?
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Offline thundley4

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Re: Hundreds of thousands loose inmternet on July 9? Heard of this?
« Reply #2 on: June 07, 2012, 12:11:13 PM »
I don't think the government website is needed. I think most of the standard anti-virus software handles the threat.
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Offline NHSparky

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Re: Hundreds of thousands loose inmternet on July 9? Heard of this?
« Reply #3 on: June 08, 2012, 01:03:26 PM »
Quote from: thundley4 on June 07, 2012, 12:11:13 PM
I don't think the government website is needed. I think most of the standard anti-virus software handles the threat.

You'd be amazed how many people never bothered to buy or use anti-virus software.
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Offline DefiantSix

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Re: Hundreds of thousands loose inmternet on July 9? Heard of this?
« Reply #4 on: June 08, 2012, 02:04:17 PM »
Quote from: NHSparky on June 08, 2012, 01:03:26 PM
You'd be amazed how many people never bothered to buy or use anti-virus software.

Just did a rebuild of my computer from the OS up.  Anti-virus went on before the drivers did.  Anti-virus didn't like it, but that's okay.
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Offline EagleKeeper

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Re: Hundreds of thousands loose inmternet on July 9? Heard of this?
« Reply #5 on: June 08, 2012, 02:44:15 PM »
Quote from: Mr Mannn on June 07, 2012, 04:26:01 AM
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/06/06/facebook-warns-hundreds-thousands-may-lose-internet-in-july/?intcmp=features&intcmp=features
I tend to be skeptical of doom and gloom, but this was on FOX News...
Why do I need to go to an FBI site to clean my computer?

For what it's worth, I believe that the tool that the FBI provided doesn't clean anything, it just checks to see if DNS resolution on your machine is working correctly and is looking at valid DNS servers. If the test comes back as being fishy then you will have more work to do.

Theoretically, if your antivirus definitions are up to date you should be OK.

As always, depending on what antivirus you use your milage may vary.

On Edit: Know that I think about it, probably all that happens with the tool is that makes your machine do a number of lookups and compares the results to what it knows to be correct. I can't imagine that it would look at you DNS configuration as there are so many different ways to do it depending on your provider.
« Last Edit: June 08, 2012, 02:58:40 PM by EagleKeeper »
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Offline thundley4

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Re: Hundreds of thousands loose inmternet on July 9? Heard of this?
« Reply #6 on: June 08, 2012, 07:41:26 PM »
Quote from: NHSparky on June 08, 2012, 01:03:26 PM
You'd be amazed how many people never bothered to buy or use anti-virus software.

Which is really stupid since so many free ones are available.  Comcast offers Nortons free, so I use it along Spybot S&D, and Malware bytes if anything acts funny.
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