Major Internet outage in the offing this week

Holi might not be colourful for millions of Internet users across the globe this year. A major Internet outage may hit on March 8, preventing users to access the net. This, cyber security experts point out, is a fallout of the infected Domain Name System (DNS) syndrome that has been going around the World Wide Web since 2007.

Pune-based Quick Heal Technologies chief technical officer Sanjay Katkar said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in November 2011 had stumbled upon a gang of six Estonian men, who had been spreading DNSChanger malware (malicious software) in the cyber world since 2007.

As the name indicates, DNS is a translator between individual computers and the web. The DNSChanger malware manipulates the web and takes the individual user to phising or other malicious sites.

“The DNS servers are operated by Internet service providers (ISP), and are included in the system’s network configuration. The Estonian gang had infected millions of DNS servers in the world,” he said. According to Katkar, post-arrest, the FBI had discovered that the gang used to maintain servers. “The US courts had directed the FBI to shut down the server within four months. The four-month deadline ends on March 8,” he said. I n case the individual system was using the infected DNS, the user

would not be able to access the web post March 8, he said. “The only way to avoid this situation would be to remove the DNSChanger malware from the system,” he added.

In case the DNS is affected, resetting of the DNS address would be necessary and could be done with the help of the ISP.