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US ISPs Continue To Support DNSChanger Redirection Servers

darthcamaro writes "On Monday of this week, the primary servers that kept those infected with the DNSChanger malware were taken offline. It's a story that sparked lots of media hype with people claiming that hundreds of thousands of people could lose their Internet access. As it turns out, major U.S. ISPs including Verizon, Cox, AT&T and CenturyLink all kept their own DNSChanger servers online, protecting any users from losing their access."

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  1. Re:Oh for the love of god by bmo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Any algorithm to decide what machine is infected remotely is not going to be any smarter than the designer, and probably a lot less so.

    The thing is that there is no algorithm at work at all except the infection itself.

    If you paid attention at all to the goings-on of this issue at all, you'd know that DNS Changer does what it's titled to do: point at a (formerly) criminally controlled set of DNS machines. These have since been commandeered by authorities and maintained. The infected machines are being artificially propped up. To "disconnect" people, all they have to do is turn these off and let the end users fend for themselves.

    So let me repeat: there is no "remote turnoff" being done here. The computers are left without a DNS when the fake DNS machines are turned off. If your computer does not point at a valid DNS when they turn off the fake DNS, it is 100 percent guaranteed that you have the DNS Changer malware.

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    BMO