Could Your Computer Quit Working on July 9?

You may begin to hear about a “Doomsday” Internet threat that is scheduled to happen on July 9th.  There is an excellent article on the Sophos website that describes the problem, but basically, here is the situation.

Cyber-criminals set up several rogue DNS servers on the Internet.  DNS servers find the IP addresses of web site URLs (such as www.wyzguys.com) and help your computer to connect the the correct website.  If your computer, DSL Modem, Cable Modem, or Wireless Access Point was changed to use these servers, your browser would be connecting you to web sites that the cyber-criminals wanted to send you to, instead of the site you requested.

The FBI and Interpol seized these DNS servers in November 2011.  Rather than turn them off immediately, they cleaned up the malicious code, and have been running them at a cost of about $90,000 so far.  They are turning them off on July 9th, so now is a good time to find out if this is a problem for you.  Otherwise, the Internet will be “unavailable” to you after July 9th.

There is an FBI website where you can check your DNS server to see if it is one of the problem servers.  You will need to run an ipconfig /all from a command prompt to get the IP addresses of your DNS servers.  There are instructions on the FBI site.

If you are infected, you will need professional assistance to resolve the problem, as the DNS information may be in your computer, DSL or Cable modem, or Wireless router, and these last three may be hard for you to access on your own.  Of course, WyzGuys would be our recommendation for professional help. Winking smile  We will be proactively contacting our clients about providing this service. 

if you use a laptop, and log in at home and a separate work location, you will want to check this out at BOTH locations.

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About the Author:

I am a cybersecurity and IT instructor, cybersecurity analyst, pen-tester, trainer, and speaker. I am an owner of the WyzCo Group Inc. In addition to consulting on security products and services, I also conduct security audits, compliance audits, vulnerability assessments and penetration tests. I also teach Cybersecurity Awareness Training classes. I work as an information technology and cybersecurity instructor for several training and certification organizations. I have worked in corporate, military, government, and workforce development training environments I am a frequent speaker at professional conferences such as the Minnesota Bloggers Conference, Secure360 Security Conference in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, the (ISC)2 World Congress 2016, and the ISSA International Conference 2017, and many local community organizations, including Chambers of Commerce, SCORE, and several school districts. I have been blogging on cybersecurity since 2006 at http://wyzguyscybersecurity.com

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