I heard on the news that starting on Monday, July 9, 2012, anyone infected with the DNS Changer malicious software will not be able to access the Internet. The problem started last November when international hackers set up an advertising scam. When the FBI arrested the hackers, they couldn’t just shut down the malicious servers. There were 570,000 infected computers that would lose Internet service. Thru a private company, the FBI set up two clean servers to take over for the malicious servers. That gave everyone time to determine if their computer was infected. And if infected, figure out what to do to about it. Read the whole story published today at www.foxnews.com.

I’m always skeptical about these kinds of stories. So, I checked it out with AVG. I’ve used their anti-virus software for years and trust the company. I found the story there, too. Read the whole story titled Check for DNS Changer or face Internet blackout this Monday.

I wasn’t too surprised to learn that my AVG Free version was aware of the problem and checking my computer with my automatic scans. But, I wanted to double check anyway. I went to the site the FBI set up thru the private company: The DNS Changer Working Group (DCWG) I clicked Detect, then chose the English URL maintained by the DCWG.

I was happy to get the clean bill of health, until I read the paragraph below it …

I decided to dig a little deeper for assurance that my computer is not infected with the DNS Changer malicious software. According to PC World’s article, Protect Yourself From DNSChanger, I could manually check my server. I followed the directions there and checked my DNS server at the FBI’s site. The result:

Now, I’m reasonably convinced that I won’t have a problem tomorrow. But, without checking, I wouldn’t have known.

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Did you know about the DNS Changer malicious software?
Did you check your computer?
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