Judge extends DNS Changer deadline as malware cleanup progresses
A federal judge yesterday extended an operation that will keep hundreds of thousands of users infected with the "DNS Changer" malware connected to the Internet until they can scrub their machines.
Meanwhile, Tacoma, Wash.-based Internet Identity (IID), which has been monitoring the cleanup efforts, said today that it had seen a "dramatic" decrease in the number of computers infected with DNS Changer.
DNS Changer, which at its peak infected more than four million Windows PCs and Macs worldwide, was the target of a major takedown led by the U.S. Department of Justice last November.
The malware hijacked users' clicks by modifying their computers' domain name system (DNS) settings to send URL requests to the criminals' own servers, a tactic that shunted victims to hacker-created sites that resembled the real domains. Read more...
Feds request DNS Changer extension to keep 400K users online
Officials with the U.S. government have asked a New York judge to extend an impending deadline that could sever ties to the Internet for hundreds of thousands of users infected with the "DNS Changer" malware.
DNS Changer, which at its peak was installed on more than four million Windows PCs and Macs worldwide -- a quarter of them in the U.S. alone -- was the target of a major takedown last November organized by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The malware hijacked users' clicks by modifying their computers' domain name system (DNS) settings to send URL requests to the criminals' own servers, a tactic that shunted victims to hacker-created sites that resembled the real domains. Read more...