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US ISPs Continue To Support DNSChanger Redirection Servers

Posted by Soulskill on from the you-had-one-job dept.

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."

8 of 87 comments (clear)

  1. What's the big deal? by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Don't all of those ISPs play that dirty trick of redirecting failed DNS lookups to advertising? Why don't they just set their DNSchanger servers to redirect all lookups to some page telling the user that their system is infected and how to download a tool to fix it?

    Sure it will break everything but http(s) but if they are happy to do it for money why aren't they happy to do it for the common good?

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    1. Re:What's the big deal? by NettiWelho · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Because if they meddled with end-user functionality they'd be swamped with angry customers demanding service and help. They take the cheap route that doesnt require additional effort on their part and lessens the incoming workload.

    2. Re:What's the big deal? by nurb432 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The big deal is they are keeping infected computers online.

      These should have been cut off day one, with a message 'call your isp' and allow NO other traffic to protect the users data.

      --
      ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  2. Oh for the love of god by 0racle · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Knock them off the internet already so they know they have a problem. DNSChanger is probably not the only issue they have.

    --
    "I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
    1. Re:Oh for the love of god by bmo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Knock them off the internet already so they know they have a problem. DNSChanger is probably not the only issue they have.

      This. I have *never* seen a compromised system with just one piece of badware. These people are probably running around with dozens, if not hundreds of pieces of evil in their machines.

      Knocking them off the net would be doing them a favour.

      --
      BMO

  3. Why? by Technoodle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is a fail. The problem will not go away if we keep coddling people that have infected machines.

  4. Commercial Decision by sociocapitalist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "...protecting any users from losing their access."

    This had nothing to do with protecting users. This was because the ISPs didn't want to be overwhelmed with support calls and have to deal with X ignorant and pissed off customers who don't know DNSChanger from a hot dog and who will just blame the ISP for any outage.

    --
    blindly antisocialist = antisocial
  5. What will it take? by crow · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What will it take for people to start taking security seriously? One of these days a major botnet will wipe a few million hard drives with no warning. I'm not convinced that even that would do it.