International hackers » The FBI’s safety net will be shut down this summer.
By LOLITA C. BALDOR
The Associated Press
Washington • 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 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.
This is what happened:
Hackers infected a network of probably more
than 570,000 computers worldwide. They took advantage of vulnerabilities
in the Microsoft Windows operating system to install malicious software
on the victim computers. This turned off antivirus updates and changed
the way the computers reconcile website addresses behind the scenes on
the Internet’s domain name system. Read more from the following link:
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/world/53955984-68/infected-users-internet-computers.html.csp
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