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Disconnection of Millions of DNSChanger-Infected PCs Delayed

Posted by samzenpus on from the not-just-yet dept.

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."

8 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. Let it happen by jdastrup · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Allowing the infected computers to fail is probably best. They'll stop working, then get replaced or cleaned up. How is that bad?

    1. Re:Let it happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why would we want infected computers to exist on the Internet anyway? 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.

      If they could be disconnected in stages, so centralized support outlets are not overwhelmed, that might be a more graceful letdown for the infected owners.

    2. Re:Let it happen by na1led · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's a good test to see how secure your systems really are. If your PC's are infected, then it's time to recheck your security.

      --
      -- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
    3. Re:Let it happen by vlm · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Allowing the infected computers to fail is probably best. They'll stop working, then get replaced or cleaned up. How is that bad?

      Maybe the US govt doesn't want them to be cleaned up because the us govt is involved in them, somehow.

      Note I'm not completely tinfoil hat here. I'm not suggesting that the govt wrote the virus or infected the computers. I'm merely suggesting this MIGHT be something like the syphilis experiments done on minorities decades ago... leave them infected, watch carefully, see what happens... Obviously a packet sniffer on the incoming DNS traffic tells you how many there are, you can generate all kinds of interesting graphs and studies and reports... You also have at least one pretty strong data point on security update habits, because they were not updated when infected. I would imagine some interesting data is being generated that would be eliminated if the "experiment" were terminated early.

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  2. Re:Hype by gnick · · Score: 5, Funny

    Save us from the Trojan? I thought using a Trojan helped prevent the spread of viruses...

    --
    He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
  3. Re:What OS are we talking about? by X0563511 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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?

    --
    For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
  4. Re:Hype by sidthegeek · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is Slashdot. No one here needs to worry about that kind of thing...

  5. Re:Forget computers, they're extraditing the perps by NoKaOi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    To me, the real story is that the people behind this botnet are getting extradited and, (knock wood), will do jail time in the US.

    While I would be happy for the creators to rot in prison, this is also scary. Why should they be extradited to the US? /. commenters get outraged at mention of the megaupload folks being extradited simply because they disagree with the laws that were allegedly violating. It was the same excuse that it related to machines in the US. What makes the US so friggin' special for them to be extradited? Is what they did not illegal in Estonia? If not, then should they be prosecuted for actions they took while in a country where it wasn't illegal? If so, then why aren't they being prosecuted in Estonia, where they actually were when they did illegal stuff? If we're in one country doing business with another country over the Internet, or doing something on servers in another country, which country's laws should apply? Which country should get to prosecute?

    Meanwhile...I still get a dozen 419 scam emails for every craigslist ad I post. While everyone reading this probably thinks that only an idiot would fall for them, there are clearly people who do. Just because somebody isn't computer literate doesn't make them an idiot, there are real people losing real money, and yet the scammers aren't prosecuted because they're "over there" even though they're scraping craigslist's US based servers, sending email to servers and people in the US, receiving money fraudulently through Western Union, a US based company, from the US.

    What kind of precedent do we want? Can we at least be consistent?