... those using iPhones, iPads, Android devices and other systems.
The DNS Changer Working Group [DCWG], an ad hoc group of IT experts, includes members from organizations such as Georgia Tech, Internet Systems Consortium, Mandiant, National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance, Neustar, Spamhaus, Team Cymru, Trend Micro, and the University of Alabama.
DNS Changer is a piece of malware discovered back in 2007 and is estimated to have covertly infected millions of computer worldwide.
It intercepts websites visited by the web browser, redirecting the users from the site they had chosen to visit to servers under the control of cybercriminals. These servers were then used to push web ads to the user, earning the malware miscreants millions of dollars in the process.
Last year, however, the FBI, working in conjunction with the Estonian police, seized the servers used by the cybercriminals and broke up the crime ring behind the operations.
But the servers used by the criminals were kept online so as to not disrupt the web activities of those infected - although they no longer serve up ads.
Running these web servers isn’t cheap, and so the plug will be pulled on them come July 2012. However, because systems infected with DNS Changer have had key settings changed in order to redirect their web browsing through these servers, once the latter go offline, the internet will become unavailable for anyone using an infected system.
Back in January of this year the DCWG estimated that some 450,000 systems were still infected with DNS Changer.
To check if your system has been violated and infected with DNS Changer, click here [no software will be downloaded to perform the check].