Written by Last night a friend asked me why some people would be without internet this Monday, knowing about this issue since last Friday I found it somewhat funny that it took so long to truly circulate. Basically for those who don’t know, some people created malware that changes the DNS settings on your computer - appropriately named DNSChanger. When you type in a website, instead of the DNS pointing your web browser to the real website, it would point you to a website that would make profit off of you visiting the page through ads and other monetized functions. No big D though, the FBI found the fraudulent DNS server and turned it into a proper DNS server.
Since then, Google and Facebook have been monitoring incoming DNS requests and provided users with a friendly message explaining that their computer has been compromised and given some easy ways to fix the problem. Now today, July 9th the FBI plans on turning off this DNS server… Now this may not make sense to anyone but the DNS server had the power to point your computer to any website they wanted… So instead of turning it into a normal fully working DNS server, why didn’t the FBI just make it so any website request pointed users to a tool that would fix their DNS settings, thus avoiding the whole catastrophe of having over 200,000 users suddenly not have internet any more! Sure, it probably would have been “illegal” but if it was done by the FBI for a constructive and positive reason, who cares? Everyone would have known about the problem right away and been able to fix it.
I can’t complain though, things like this keep me employed! =)
