Was This the Return of Y2K?
We dodged a bullet this week. On Monday, July 9, after a massive publicity campaign, the FBI shut down the Domain Name System servers supporting systems infected with the DNSChanger Trojan. That meant any computer or router compromised by DNSChanger--a vile bit of malware--lost access to the Internet. In advance of the fateful day, government sites and media outlets jumped on the story, printing instructions on how to remove the malware and warning of grave consequences for laggards who didnt disinfect their systems. So what happened on Monday? Not much. The public information campaign was so effective that only about 41,800 computers lost Internet access on Monday, according to the FBI. Some may say we simply reprised the Y2K scenario, getting people all worked up over nothing. I look at it another way: Given that millions of computers at one time may have harbored the malware, its safe to say that many of us have Internet access right now because the informed people made a lot of noise and got everyones attention. The scare tactics worked, and Im so glad they did.
--Editorial Director Steve Fox
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