Disconnection of Millions of DNSChanger-Infected PCs Delayed

tsu doh nimh writes "Millions of computers infected with the stealthy and tenacious DNSChanger Trojan may be spared a planned disconnection from the Internet early next month if a New York court approves a new request by the U.S. government. Meanwhile, six men accused of managing and profiting from the huge collection of hacked PCs are expected to soon be extradited from their native Estonia to face charges in the United States."

Comments

Re:Let it happen

[jbov]

If the two items in bold below were not true, then they would shut down the DNS servers immediately.

FTFA:

Earlier this month [...] The company said more than 3 million systems worldwide — 500,000 in the United States — remain infected with the Trojan, and that at least one instance of the Trojan was still running on computers at 50 percent of Fortune 500 firms and half of all U.S. government agencies.

Gotta keep everything running for the good ol' boys.

Re:What OS are we talking about?

[X0563511]

Lazy, aren't you? Google the Trojan name, and the very first result tells you.
Trojan:W32/DNSChanger

That's if the context didn't tell you... Hmm, a Trojan infecting millions of machines to the level of getting courts involved. You really expect that to be Mac or Linux?

Re:Let it happen

[AK Marc]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment

And never, ever, look up diseases on Wikipedia. Too many good pictures of icky stuff.

Re:Let it happen

[garyebickford]

The excuse that they create jobs, in cleaning them up, is not a strong one, since by that same logic you could also make work by smashing them.

Yes, this is the Broken Window Fallacy.
To quote:

The parable, also known as the broken window fallacy or glazier's fallacy, demonstrates how opportunity costs, as well as the law of unintended consequences, affect economic activity in ways that are "unseen" or ignored.