DNS Changer Alert

Okay I waited a coupla days to tell you about this cause the traffic on the rescue sites has been so heavy they’ve been up and down constantly.


There’s a very nasty bug set to detonate this summer which is so virulent it can pass through most virus checkers including Norton, MacAfee and AVG. It changes your IP DNS server, you don’t really need to know what that is, to a server for high-pressure sales, porn or adult services. That’s probably why it is called The DNS Changer Trojan/Worm. Yeah you don’t really need to know which it is bad no matter what you call it.

The good new is you can take steps to find out if you are infected and to eliminate ithe nasty if you are.

Bring up your internet browser, probably Internet Explorer or Firefox, and go to the Ip URL window at the top of the page. That’s where it has a string of letters starting with http::/www. That’s the URL so you can impress your non-geeky friends with how much you know but not lure the nerds into conversation cause they’ll know you are just blowing smoke.

In the URL window clear out whatever is there and type in http://www.dcwg.org./

This will take you to the site set up by the FBI to combat this nasty. I did tell you it was a big deal.

When you get there you’ll find instructions on how to check to see if you are infected,

http://www.dns-ok.us/

is one of the links and when you click on the link you’ll go to a page with a green symbol or a red symbol. If you get a green you can relax, sort of but if you get a red then you need to go back and follow the instructions for getting the nasty the hell out of your system.

There is of course a gotcha.

Please note, however, that if your ISP is redirecting DNS traffic for its customers you would have reached this site even though you are infected.

If that’s the case you can still do a manual check, if you are brave enough. Now this only works with XP so if you have Windows 7 or Vista you’ll have to find the check on the DCWG page.

Go to start, run. This brings up a DOS window and you type the command, cmd. At the prompt type ipconfig /all and hit enter. This will bring up the actual DNS settings at use on your computer. You can then check the list on

http://www.dcwg.org/detect/checking-for-dns-changer-on-windows-xp/

for known infected or redirected DNS settings.

Yeppers it is a lot of work but this is one bad boy and you shouldn’t put it off.

I’ve attached the newspaper article about the problem to this post and I hope you take the warning seriously do the check and find everything is okay.

Click image for larger view