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If you have heard that something may happen to your internet connection on July 9, don’t take the “internet blackout” lightly but at the same time it is not that much serious if you take the proper care as there are solutions available online.
Several hundreds of thousands of computers around the world infected with DNSChanger risk getting left without internet after July 9, reports CBC News. At the same time people don’t need to worry if they do the timely checkup if the virus is hidden in their system.
This will happen because the FBI beginning July 9 shuts downs the DNS-servers serving the victims of virus. DNS-servers in question were set-up in November 2011 to support the victims of DNSChanger malware. They replaced the “rogue” servers, which the virus used.
FBI had at the time of their setting had said that support servers will not be there permanently and were intended at providing time to victims to get rid of the virus.
When the servers are shut off, users whose computers are still infected with DNSChanger, will not be able to visit any website by simply typing the conventional address in the address bar (for example, cnn.com). To access the website, one must use the site’s IP-address (157.166.255.18) in the browser of infected computer.
DNSChanger virus was first discovered in 2007. The plan, under which it operates, involves creating “fake DNS-servers” to redirect users to fraudulent websites. It was only in 2011 when FBI together with Estonian police cracked the hacker ring (who had written these Trojans) working under the company “Rove Digital” and disabled the nodes of DNSChanger.
DNS-servers are responsible for mapping IP-addresses and letter addresses. DNSChanger trojans after infecting the target machine altered its DNS settings and thereby sending the users to fraudulent websites instead of real ones.

Statistics

In total, DNSChanger had infected more than four million computers. According to CBC News, now in the world, there are 275,000 affected machines, while The Daily Telegraph writes about 350 thousand.

According to DNS Changer Working Group, there are 45,619 computers in the US that are infected by the DNS Changer, in Italy there are 21,831 as of July 4. Third country in the list is India where 19,642 IP addresses have been infected.

Free DNSChanger Check?
There is still time and people need not to worry much about the internet blackout.

Many anti virus companies are offering free service to check if your system is infected with the DNSChanger malware, their links are:
McAfee: www.mcafee.com/dnscheck
DNS Changer Working Group: http://www.dcwg.org/detect
Symantec will inform the infected user machines through their product.