Internet could go dark for millions if court order expires
22.05.12
VERNAL — Computers of all makes and models sit on shelves in the back room at Techris Design, waiting to have the harmful content that's built up on their hard drives removed.
That's the bulk of the small repair shop's business.
"Ninety percent of the work that we do is virus removal and repair," owner Ted Munford said.
Munford and others in his line of work could be extremely busy in the next few weeks, thanks to a piece of malware that federal prosecutors allege was created by a group of Estonian cyber criminals.
In November, the FBI and police in Estonia wrapped up Operation Ghost Click, which resulted in the arrest and indictment of six Estonian nationals. The group had compromised millions of computers around the world with a bug known as DNSChanger.
The malicious software — known in the industry as "malware" — changed the Domain Name Server, or DNS, for a targeted website, redirecting Internet users from the sites they were seeking to other sites. Federal authorities say the Estonians sent Web surfers to these ghost sites, which featured specific advertisements, then collected an estimated $16 million from the advertisers for the extra Web traffic.
Source: Deseret News