What to know before July 9 'Internet doomsday' arrives

http://www.technolog.msnbc.msn.com/technology/technolog/what-know-july-9-internet-doomsday-arrives-869336

Internet users scanning their Twitter feeds or Facebook accounts Sunday might want to add one more quick click to check their computer for malware.

Thousands of people around the country whose computers were infected with the malicious DNSChanger software more than a year ago faced the possibility of not being able to get online after midnight EDT.

At 12:01 a.m. EDT, the FBI planned to shut down the Internet servers set up as a temporary safety net to keep infected computers online for the past eight months. The court order the agency obtained to keep the servers running expired, and it was not renewed.

The problem began when international hackers ran an online advertising scam to take control of more than 570,000 infected computers around the world. When the FBI went in to take down the hackers late last year, agents realized that if they turned off the malicious servers being used to control the computers, all the victims would lose their Internet service.

In a highly unusual move, the FBI set up the safety net. The bureau brought in a private company to install two clean Internet servers to take over for the malicious servers so that people would not suddenly lose their Internet.

The FBI arranged for a private company to run a website — http://www.dcwg.org — as a place where computer users could go to see if their computer was infected by DNSChanger, and find links to other computer security business sites where they could find fixes for the problem. (If you want a quick check of your computer's status, the FBI-authorized dns-ok.us site is fast — no software is required for the scan.)

From the onset, most victims didn't even know their computers were infected, although the malicious software probably has slowed their web surfing and disabled their antivirus software, making their machines more vulnerable to other problems.