

Thousands face Internet loss as FBI shuts off servers - ColinWright
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18735228

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Chlorus
The comments @ [http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/what-
the-i...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/what-the-internet-
doomsday-virus-is-and-how-to-fix-
it/2012/07/05/gJQA67vhPW_story.html?tid=pm_pop) are hilarious, in a depressing
way. Here's my favorite: "Personally, I like the idea of firing my internet
service provider for not protecting me from such viruses and other malarkey.
They are the ones transferring the viruses. They should be sued. And, after
doing that it would be good exercise and fun to take a sledge hammer to all of
my computer parts."

Who doesn't want their ISP filtering everything they browse?

~~~
krautsourced
The comments on these kind of articles, on sites like the BBC's, are always a
hilarious mix of misinformation, outrage and usually blame shifting away from
personal responsibility. Well, it's hilarious until you come to the
realisation that these may be the so called "regular" people and this may
actually be how the majority thinks (not a whole lot, it turns out).

~~~
barrkel
As opposed to comments on US news websites, which usually alternate liberal
conspiracy theorizing with conservative conspiracy theorizing, the actual
article only having the slightest relevance to the keyword-triggered axe-
grinding that immediately commences.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
It makes me wonder why news sites even allow comments. Remember the pre-social
web? It worked just fine.

I'm sure it comes down to page views, like everything else on the web.

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rdl
I still don't understand why this is such a big deal. So 300k users drop off
the net until they fix their DNS settings, either by manually editing, or
calling their support provider to complain, or taking their computer in for
service, or buying a new computer (which is a fairly common way to fix serious
computer problems).

It should be immediately apparent to the users that something is wrong, even
if they have no idea how to fix it. It's a really easy fix as soon as the
first competent person looks at it. I'm going to save my concern for attacks
on infrastructure, or attacks which covertly compromise systems in ways which
aren't readily apparent to the users.

~~~
hboon
ISPs aren't known for stellar customer service. It could lead to a very long
wait without internet access for some people, even if each call only takes
10-20 minutes.

> It's a really easy fix as soon as the first competent person looks at it.

Most users just aren't technically competent in this sense.

~~~
bradleyland
So this is a profitable event for geek squad. Malware costs consumers billions
of dollars a year. This is nothing more than a line entry in that list.
There's no good reason for it to get this much media coverage.

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nodata
I agree with removing infected machines from the normal Internet, but I'd put
them on a separate network where they can only see instructions on how to fix
their problem.

~~~
Vivtek
Exactly. Route all DNS queries to your page saying "You've been infected by
malware, which we fixed, but now you have to change your DNS pointers or have
somebody else fix them".

If I can think of that in two seconds, why can't the FBI?

~~~
Chlorus
This was brought up a while ago, and the reason it was shot down was that no
one wants to condition users into taking advice from random web pages. Think
of all the 'you've been infected! download anti-virus 2012 pro!' pop-ups that
infest the net.

~~~
nodata
My proposal:

1\. Use SSL ("check for the padlock")

2\. Use a well-known URL (www.fbi.gov)

3\. Don't provide any downloads, or anything to click, just ask the user to
contact their ISP.

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sp332
This is a much better explanation of what happened and why the federal
government (FBI + courts) decided to take these actions.
[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/11/how-the-most-
mass...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/11/how-the-most-massive-
botnet-scam-ever-made-millions-for-estonian-hackers/)

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jagermo
This might be the only way to reach all of the infected. Up till now they were
passive, now they are forced to take action - even if it's just complaining to
their ISP. I don't want to know, what other kind of malware is working on
those 300 000 systems.

