Have you heard about the possible Internet outage for a chunk of folks come Monday morning? You haven’t? Well, it seems the FBI busted some hackers for creating rogue DNS servers, and they have been allowing the servers to run so that a large number of people who are affected could clean up their systems. For the uninitiated, DNS servers are the machines that allow you to access the Internet, and your system may be pointing to a rogue server instead of your ISP’s server, which means on Monday when the rogue servers are gone, your access to the Internet could be gone. Hopefully that’s as technical as I’m going to get since I want you awake for the rest of the post.
So you’re thinking, “I don’t want to be without Internet service on Monday. What do I do? What do I do? What DO I do?!” I’m so glad you asked because I’m going to tell you, and maybe this will get a wee bit more technical. But first, relax. The problem doesn’t affect as many people as the news bulletins imply. There now you can read the rest of this without panic.
The group working with the FBI to provide technical assistance has created help pages. Instructions for checking your system are here. Please note the dns-ok.us page is not always reliable. It’s better to check your server addresses manually. Scroll down on the link to find instructions for your particular operating system. And as far as fixing the problem if you have it? The same group has provided some resources. My advice? Use Kaspersky. I’ve used all the other software companies for general coverage and specific fixes, and they’re not nearly as good. I’m being kind here. If I were really going to tell you what I think, I would say, “DON’T ever use Norton or McAfee for anything ’cause they suck, and if you already use them, uh, you’re not that protected. Do you know how many systems I’ve worked on that were messed up by a false sense of security about those softwares?!! And also be leery of MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials) simply because Microsoft shouldn’t have that much power.” But I’m being nice, so I won’t say that. I’ll only say that I’ve tried all of the others and found Kaspersky to be the most consistent in protection. And if you’ve ever had a system infected, you know what a pain in the ass it is, and you usually have to come to someone like me who messes with it and hopefully puts it back to normal for a fee more than the Kaspersky software costs. Note: back up your files before you start any of this. I shouldn’t have to say this, but it’s surprising how many people don’t do it as a matter of routine.
And frankly, I just like Eugene Kaspersky. It’s my infernal gut dictating this. Yes, I admit it. I like the guy, and Euguene, you should keep the long hair!
[click for his Twitter profile]
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RAFrenzy 
Thanks for this information Frenz! Now to convince my husband! I’ve been telling him that Norton isn’t good enough for quite awhile but he never believes me! Here I go again! Wish me luck.
Thank you! This is far more helpful than any of the print/broadcast etc. reports.
Fully support your advice – I use Kaspersky for years now (and had a try at Norton that used to rule in times of DOS and early Windows, and McAfee, and NOD32, and AVG…). I find Kaspersky by far the best protection, and several computer programmers among my friends agree.
Thanks for the Kaspersky tip. I got a suspicious e-mail from a friend yesterday (nothing in the subject line, contained a link to a photo, not expecting an e-mail from that friend), so I called her and it turned out her e-mail account had been hacked. I passed on the info about Kaspersky to her to help her clean it up and deleted that e-mail. I think you saved both of us. ;-)
Glad this was of some help! Mostly, I hope that others realize this threat on Monday is not nearly as significant as it’s being made to sound, and kick in the head there will be hackers who take advantage of this to dupe people into “fixing” their systems.
It’s actually a cool and useful piece of info. I’m satisfied that you just shared this useful information with us. Please keep us informed like this. Thanks for sharing.
We use “Avast!” and have done ever since we first found out about it. Unintrusive, works very well (there have been tests to show that it does a better job than Norton and McAffee and so on), and the home edition is free … which is another bonus.