Fbi Cautions About The Internet Blackout In July 2012

Internet users across the world are feeling threatened by a black out that may happen

in July 2012 because the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is all set to turn off the servers previously installed by the agency. This story started off in November 2011 when hackers wrote a rogue program that could turn off the antivirus software on your system and alter the settings of DNS routing of the websites.

A special investigation group comprising the FBI, the NASA-OIG and Estonian police apprehended several cyber criminals on November 8, 2011 under Operation Ghost Click. A company called Rove Digital was being managed and operated by cyber criminals. These malicious agents spread various DNS changing viruses such as TDSS, Alureon, TidServ and TDL4.

These botnets authored by this group was designed to alter the DNS settings and take the victims browser to malicious DNS in data centers located in Estonia, New York and Chicago. This has been done to cause data loss, data distortion and other damages. This was termed as an emergency by security agencies. Browsers are redirected to malicious DNS servers that were purposely programmed to give fake and malicious answers, alter user searches and promote spurious and harmful products.

Around 570,000 computers in the whole world were affected by this maliciously designed program. The authors of the program utilized the vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Windows operating system and installed the computer virus without much difficulty. So all users of Windows need to be extra careful of this particular threat and set up strong firewalls to safeguard their computers.

It is however not an easy thing to exactly count the number of affected internet users. FBI has stated that there were at least 568,000 unique Internet addresses using the rogue servers on the day when the criminals were arrested. US had the most affected connections which was around 85,000. The countries with more than 20,000 infections included Italy, India, England and Germany.

FBI has been actively involved in trying to contain the impact and damage of this virus attack and has also replaced the infected servers with clean servers. After the arrest of the six Estonian cyber criminals, FBI decided to run two substitute servers for eight months. But these too are now costing the federal government about $87,000 and therefore the question has arisen about the fact of whether the FBI will continue with them or not.

FBI has set up another service around 30 days back, to use government computers to prevent Internet disruptions that may be caused due this impending threat. Due to the recurring cost, this service is also going to meet a dead end in the month of July. As the shutdown of this service by FBI is inching closer, internet users are feeling the threat all the more.

Under these circumstances, users are advised to either seek help from security partners of the FBI or install a good quality antivirus software that will form a security wall around their system. To keep your system well-protected before this July blackout and stay away from not only this threat but all other types of online threats.

by: Polly M Quinton

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