Malware Monday looms, but can be averted

 (Miami Herald)

Computer geeks and federal agents have a warning for the public this weekend: Don’t wake up Monday with a case of the Malware Blues.

Upward of 60,000 American laptops and desktops late this week were still infected with the notorious DNSChanger Malware – a computer virus that debuted five years ago. And unless those impacted take the necessary steps, the FBI warns, they will be without Internet access come Monday morning.

Shortly after midnight Monday morning, the feds will switch off the temporary servers they had set up to let those affected by the bug safely use the Internet. The pending blackout has been ominously named Malware Monday.

Last November, the FBI announced the arrest of the virus’ creators, capping a two-year investigation dubbed Operation Ghost Click. While DNSChanger’s architects – part of the Rove Digital criminal enterprise – have been locked up, their disease has remained a scourge for many. The FBI gained temporary authorization to deploy clean DNS servers, allowing infected machines to still access the Internet. But that stop-gap measure ends Monday morning. Computers still with the bug will get nothing but error pages when they pull up a browser.

Thomas Grasso, a supervisory special agent in the FBI’s cyber division, said on the agency’s website that he hopes the public will “follow our recommendations to: one, determine if they’re affected by this; and then two, fix the problem.”

To help you do so, the feds and security experts from Georgia Tech have established a detection and repair website: http://www.dcwg.org/.