AfterDawn: News

Google to alert users infected with DNSChanger

Google hopes to warn 500,000 within a week.

DNSChanger is malware that infected millions of computers around the world. As its name suggests, it changed the DNS settings on a users' computer to use malicious DNS servers instead of what they'd normally use. It also could change the DNS settings of a router or wireless access point if it was using the default user and password as a login to the web interface.



There have been several websites setup to detect if DNSChanger has modified either the DNS settings of a computer or a router, and now Google has decided to participate.

If you search Google and it detects that your DNS settings have possibly been modified by DNSChanger, it will show the following warning:

The link on the warning will give advice on how your DNS settings can be restored.

On July 9th, the FBI will shut down the DNS servers currently being used by infected computers and routers to use the Internet. It has already had to delay shutting the servers down previously because so many users still have infected equipment.

Written by: James Delahunty @ 24 May 2012 2:22

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• 5 comments

• dEwMe

  One downside here is many users likely will see this and assume it's another phony virus scam add we see all over the place. That was my first reaction seeing the picture here.
  

  Just my $0.02,
  
  dEwMe

  24.5.2012 12:52 #1

• cart0181

  Originally posted by dEwMe: One downside here is many users likely will see this and assume it's another phony virus scam add we see all over the place. That was my first reaction seeing the picture here. Either way, it still gets the message across, now doesn't it? Google doesn't have banners on the top of their main page. People know this.
  

  24.5.2012 14:42 #2

• ballybo

  Thanks for the info. how much will it cost if I'm infected?

  27.5.2012 08:18 #3

• ChappyTTV

  Originally posted by ballybo: Thanks for the info. how much will it cost if I'm infected? If you pay for a fix for this, you are being scammed again.
  There are always free fixes for these kind of things on security web sites like MalwareBytes and well known tech help sites.
  
  

  29.5.2012 23:54 #4

• ChappyTTV

  Originally posted by dEwMe: One downside here is many users likely will see this and assume it's another phony virus scam add we see all over the place. That was my first reaction seeing the picture here. I thought the exact same thing...if I had not known about this beforehand, I probably would have closed the app and done a scan.
  

  29.5.2012 23:55 #5