http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/29/dnschanger_rife_as_deadline_looms/ By John Leyden The Register 29th June 2012 Even though the DNSChanger safety net deadline expires in just two weeks, 12 per cent of Fortune 500 firms still have at least one infected machine on their network, according to a new survey. DNSChanger screwed up the domain name system (DNS) settings of compromised machines to point surfers to rogue servers, redirecting surfers to dodgy websites as part of a long-running click-fraud and scareware distribution racket. The FBI dismantled the botnet's command-and-control infrastructure back in November, as part of Operation GhostClick. A court order, twice extended, allowed the Feds to set up replacement DNS Servers that resolved DNS queries from infected machines. This extended safety net will lapse on 9 July. Security laggards – who have had months to act and most recently have been targeted with warning messages from Google and Facebook – will be unable to use the internet normally unless they clean up their systems after this 9 July deadline. Without access to DNS servers it won't be possible to send emails or surf the web, leaving compromised machines cut off from the interwebs. Despite the seriousness of these looming problems, a survey by IID (Internet Identity), published on Thursday, discovered that 12 per cent of the Fortune 500 firms and 4 per cent of "major" US government organisations are still infected with DNSChanger. The malware also disables security software and updates on infected machines, further increasing the security risk by leaving compromised machines wide open to secondary attacks. [...] -- Learn how to be a Pen Tester, CISSP, ISSMP, or ISSAP with Expanding Security online. Come to a free class and see how good and fun the program really is. http://www.expandingsecurity.com/PainPillReceived on Mon Jul 02 2012 - 03:02:42 PDT
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