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Author Topic: March 8th is bad news day says FBI  (Read 2403 times)

AdrianH

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March 8th is bad news day says FBI
« on: February 08, 2012, 12:16:44 PM »

http://blogs.norman.com/2012/for-consumption/save-your-internet-dnschanger-trojan-switch-off-issues

Save Your Internet: DNSChanger Trojan Switch-Off Issues  (February 8, 2012 by Miss P.)

Quote
The FBI is expecting a worldwide internet blackout on March 8th, the date that the USA’s top investigators turn off servers running the trojan DNSChanger. Don’t worry, however, because it only takes one-click to see if you’ll be affected.

The DNSChanger malware, which peaked at nearly one million worldwide infections – changes its victims Domain Name System (DNS) settings and therefore routes all of that computers’ internet data through to the hackers’ computer systems. Full details about the virus can be found on the FBI’s press release (PDF).

The hackers can then steal user information and automatically serve up adverts – as long as their servers are running. When the FBI raided the DNSChanger’s server-farm and arrested six Estonians (in an operation called Ghost Click), the USA’s top investigators also took control of their computers........... (more)

Is it just me ? How does any professional server admin, especially those for supposedly secure govt. deptartments and agencies  allow anything like this to happen?  Even the FBI can't keep their systems secure, have they never heard of firewalls and behaviour tracking software?
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roseway

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Re: March 8th is bad news day says FBI
« Reply #1 on: February 08, 2012, 12:33:33 PM »

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I don't read from that report that the FBI's servers were compromised - they are simply a law enforcement agency closing down some criminal activity.
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  Eric

AdrianH

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Re: March 8th is bad news day says FBI
« Reply #2 on: February 08, 2012, 12:43:26 PM »

Quote
Although the number of infected computers has fallen (see here), turning off the servers still means that computers in over half of Fortune 500 companies – and in 33 US Government systems – would be left internet-less.


Last week it came to light that hackers had listened in to FBI/UK conversations about security and hackers, the FBI systems were also brought down in the last month. People walk in to US server systems, kids can access the USAAF,Whitehouse and Pentagon ............ why?  Gary Mackinnon said he could see many other people hacking through the Pentagon systems, security ........ what security?
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roseway

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Re: March 8th is bad news day says FBI
« Reply #3 on: February 08, 2012, 01:03:56 PM »

I have to agree with that - government organisations don't understand security.
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  Eric

asbokid

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Re: March 8th is bad news day says FBI
« Reply #4 on: February 08, 2012, 06:26:18 PM »

I have to agree with that - government organisations don't understand security.

i read somewhere that the embedded software that drives the entire royal navy fleet runs on microsoft windows.

frightening thought. 

World War I all began by the shooting of some duke called Ferdinand.

but it will be a buffer overflow bug in Microsoft Windows that starts World War III !

Quote
The FBI is expecting a worldwide internet blackout on March 8th, the date that the USA’s top investigators turn off servers running the trojan DNSChanger.

Bit of an extreme thing to do.

The FBI could just re-map the routing for the IP addresses of those compromised nameservers.  Instead they would route to genuine and reputable servers (e.g. the public DNS servers of google or opendsn [1] [2])..

why didn't the FBI do that?   what's achieved by crippling millions of infected PCs?

[1] http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDNS#cite_note-all_IPs-3
« Last Edit: February 08, 2012, 07:15:46 PM by asbokid »
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anything