Yes, you read it right, FBI might shutdown the internet on March 8, this might be temporarily but we cannot neglect it’s effect.

Why will the FBI shutdown the internet?

In 2011, FBI held about 6 men on the account of creating a malicious computer script called the DNSChanger Trojan, the Trojan horse corrupted computers of more than 100 countries, including an estimated 500,000 servers in America alone. The FBI has to reactively replace the rogue Trojan with servers of their own in an attempt to mitigate the problem but the fix was only temporary. Now the FBI is expected to end use of those replacement servers as early as next month and at that point, millions will be internet-less around the world.

The DNSChanger Trojan horse infected PCs and redirected users to a malicious website. Basically, a DNS or Domain name server converts the IP Address to the actual domain name and vice-versa and fetches the information from the World Wide Web. Once infected by the DNSChanger Trojan, however, websites entered into Internet browsers were hijacked to malicious servers and, in turn, directed the user to an unintended, fraudulent site.

After the arrest of the culprits the FBI shut down the malicious DNSChanger botnet network and replaced them with legit servers to correct the problem. Those servers, however, were installed “just long enough for companies and home users to remove DNSChanger malware from their machines,” according to the court order that established them.
That deadline is March 8, and those legit servers are expected to be retired. At that point, computers still infected with the Trojan will be essentially unable to navigate the Internet.

Who will be affected by the FBI Internet Shutdown?

Half of all Fortune 500 companies and more than 20+ major government entities in the US are still infected with the worm, says Security company IID [Internet Identity]. Unless they take the proper steps to eradicate the Trojan from their systems, millions of users worldwide will be left helplessly attempting to navigate to non-existent servers and in-turn the non-existent internet.

“At this rate, a lot of users are going to see their Internet break on March 8,” Rod Rasmussen, president and chief technology officer at Internet Identity, cautions Krebs On Security.

“I’m guessing a lot more people would care at that point,” Rasmussen adds. While infected users are cautioned to correct the problem now, millions internationally are still believed to be infected. “It certainly would be an interesting social experiment if these systems just got cut off,” he adds.

What will you do if the internet is gone?

Do let us know

via: RT

The DNetWorks Team