DNS Changer Virus

Everyone in the media is making a big deal of the DNS Changer Virus. If you have it, you will drop off the net in a few days when the virus kicks in.

If you have an anti-virus program and it is working, try doing a manual scan, then you are likely OK… like 99% certain to be OK.

You can visit a rather lame page to test whether you are infected. If it gives a positive result, you DO have a problem. Visit: http://www.dcwg.org/detect/. This is the page mainstream news media is sending people to.

The problem with it is: it does not definitively test whether you have the virus or not. Your ISP could be unintentionally hiding the problem. So, only the positive result is definitive. However, the site has a FIX for the problem.

The US FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) has a better ID and fix it page.

The FBI page about DNS Changer (link died 5/2017) is here: http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/november/malware_110911

This is so big in the news because people can’t tell if they have it or not. So, fear of the unknown kicks  in.

So, how do you definitively tell if you have a problem? Go to the FBI site. Since this is a DNS Changer how do you know if you are at the FBI’s site? OK, that is a problem. I’ve spelled out the URL’s to help. The red and green parts have to be in the URL as shown. If what I have does not match what you see in the address field when you get to the page… have a friend email you a copy of the page.

I put this up because some are asking me how to check if they have it. Since they are not finding anything and it keeps coming up in the news, they want a definitive answer with some meat. So, this little post.

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