Diagnostic test urged for computer virus threat - SW Iowa News

Hundreds of thousands of Internet users may lose their online access Monday, and everyone â€" from the FBI to the Better Business Bureau â€" is urging all consumers and businesses to run a diagnostic test to see if their computers are infected.

The FBI’s “DNSChanger Working Group” at dcwg.org can detect the malware and explain how to fix infected machines.

“Everyone should check to see if their computer is infected,” said Better Business Bureau President and CEO Jim Hegarty.

“It takes less than a minute to check and, if your equipment is clean, there is nothing more you need to do.

“If your computer is infected, the DNS Changer Working Group recommends the necessary steps to save your computer. But this must be done by July 9 or you could lose Internet access.”

Last November, the FBI took down the servers of international hackers operating out of Estonia.

According to the FBI, beginning in 2007, the cyber ring used a class of malware called DNSChanger â€" DNS stands for Domain Name System â€" to infect approximately 4 million computers in more than 100 countries.

The sophisticated Internet fraud scheme infected about 500,000 computers in the U.S., including computers belonging to individuals, businesses, and government agencies, such as NASA.

Pottawattamie County chief information officer David Bayer said he was aware of the malware, but not concerned for local government computer systems.

“Our anti-virus software installed on county computers updates itself automatically and thus has protection against this particular infection,” he said.

But users with less robust protection might have concerns.

The malware secretly altered the settings on infected computers enabling the scammers to digitally hijack Internet searches and re-route computers to certain websites and advertisements to generate at least $14 million in illicit fees.

The malware also prevented the installation of anti-virus software and operating system updates on infected computers, leaving those computers and their users unable to detect or stop the malware attacks, and exposing them to additional attacks.

FBI cyber agents said the group was organized and operating as a traditional business but profiting illegally as the result of the malware, with a level of complexity that the FBI had not seen before.

For example, when users of infected computers clicked on the link for the official website of iTunes they were instead taken to a website for a business unaffiliated with Apple Inc. that purported to sell Apple software.

In other words, not only did the cyber thieves make money from the scheme, they deprived legitimate website operators and advertisers of substantial revenue, according to the FBI’s indictment.

Hegarty said if the servers had simply been shut down, the victims’ computers would no longer be able to access the Internet. So the FBI set up clean servers to replace the ones that were running the scam, and victims have been redirected to those clean servers ever since, usually without any knowledge they’d been infected in the first place.

Originally the rescue servers were to be active until March, but a court ruling extended the program until Monday. Hegarty said at that time the clean servers will be turned off and anyone who is still infected with the malware will lose their Internet access.

The FBI believes there are still about 360,000 infected computers in a dozen countries, including the U.S. and Canada.

FBI Assistant Director in Charge Janice K. Fedarcyk said in November that the arrests showed what Tom Friedman was talking about in his 2005 book, “The World is Flat,” which was about the globalization of the economy.

“By identifying subjects in Estonia who caused a server in Manhattan to direct a user in Germany to a website in California â€" the FBI has proved the world is truly flat,” Fedarcyk said.

“The Internet is ubiquitous in everyday life because it shrinks the world in so many positive ways: in commerce, in academia, in entertainment, and in communications. But it is a tool, and it can be exploited by those with a little know-how and bad intentions.”