Back in November 2011, 6 Estonians were arrested and charged with creating and distributing a virus to millions of computers worldwide. The virus affects the way your computer looks up the IP addresses of websites or DNS. When you type: www.no-ip.com into your browser, your computer queries your ISPs server to ask “what is the IP address for no-ip.com” in response, your ISP tells your computer what the IP address is, and your computer successfully loads that website. Well, what the “DNS Changer” Trojan does is, instead of querying your ISPs servers, your computer queries one of the malicious servers. This whole scheme was setup in order to make a ton of money on online advertising, and it worked, until the FBI caught on.

So, back in November, the FBI successfully arrested the 6 people behind the Trojan, and replaced the malicious servers with good, happy servers. The servers were only meant to stay on for 4 months, but because of the large quantity of computers suspected to be infected with the trojan and the high level of traffic they were receiving, they were left on a bit longer. Until July 9th that is, when they will be shutdown forever.  Which will cause a MAJOR headache if you are in fact, one of the unlucky ones that was infected.

So, what can you do? Well, for starters head to this site to test your DNS. If you get the green light, you are good to go, but if you get the dreaded red light, you are infected and will have to follow the additional instructions for disinfecting your computer (yeah spring cleaning bonus round!)

I wouldn’t suggest waiting either… If you are one of the unlucky ones that has been infected, it will be much easier to fix your computer now, when you actually have a working internet connection. As opposed to on July 9th when your internet is no longer working and you now have no way to get connected to the internet to download the necessary software to fix the issue.

So, take 5 seconds right now to see if you computer is infected, okay GO!