The countdown begins (DNS Changer Malware)

I believe the site checks which DNS servers your computer is using. They have a list of rogue DNS IP addresses that the bad guys use (the FBI took control of these later on).

Say if your PC uses (rogue) DNS IP of 111.222.333.444 (don't laugh, I did it on purpose) for name resolution, the website knows it right away. Keep in mind that the site does not attempt to scan for malware and remove it. If you have it before the scan, you will still have it after.

If you have Windows, "ipconfig /all" (without quotes) will tell you the DNS server IP addresses your PC is using.

Wanna know why no computers crashed when the century changed? Huh? Well, let me enlighten you and about a billion others that simply have no clue as to why that period of time passed with relatively no computer issues. About a million programmers and analysts, myself amongst them, worked for more than a year prior to that time to make sure literally billions and billions of lines of computer code would properly handle the century change.

When the first computer and code was invented, no one was able to foresee or even cared that their code would be around when the century changed. Storing the century in only two bytes instead of four saved two bytes every time a date was used. This was a concern way back when storage technology was primitive and massively expensive. The century field was only two characters in length, hence 1999 was represented in billions upon billions of lines of code as "99". So, as an example of the havoc that was avoided, imagine that you owe a bill as of 11/11/99 and it is now 12/31/99 and you haven't yet paid. How old is your debt? 50 days old. How old would your debt be on 01/01/00? You'd be responsible for one heck of a late charge.

Believe me when I tell you that if tens of thousands of people had not spent million of hours remediating computer code, the havoc would have been world-wide. The fact that "nothing happened" is a testament to the talent and skill of all those people.

And that is why the century changed with most people blissfully unaware of why "nothing happened".

Since I use Charter, they assign my DNS address when I log on. This means that Charter owns that IP.

So, if the FBI knew which IP's were infected, why could they not have alerted the owners of those IP's?

I was always very proud of the IT people that I managed because their code stood the test of time even though the original databases did not (anyboby remember punch cards???). Adding function to the software usually involved adding (or, in the this year 2000 case, expanding) fields in the databases.

I remember punch cards very well and went through the Y2K conversions in my organization ... and yes it was a big deal and a tribute to all the programmers and technicians who carried it off with no major disasters or disruptions. Changing the data bases and program logic to accommodate 4 digit year codes was one solution. Another common technique was to retain the 2 digit year codes in the data base and change the program logic to use a "sliding date window" tied to the current date. In many cases on older applications, the sliding date window approach required less programming and was just as effective of a solution. We used both techniques in my organization, depending on the nature of the application.

We felt like the change to 4 digit years was the most complete approach.

I believe the FBI replaced those rogue DNS with their own DNS to redirect infected computers to the correct destination. They just shutdown their operation this past weekend. Some infected computers loses internet connection because they can't resolve domain names to IP addresses.

Take a look at this www.fbi.gov/DNS-changer-malware.pdf

There's a list of IP addresses (rogue DNS servers) in the PDF.

It's also possible that our debt gets wiped out completely. I was hoping for the latter bur darn it, your coders prevented that from happening.

I sure do remember punch cards and collators, and horror of horrors, printers that you had to hand program by creating paper tapes you ran through the little reader on the bottom of the printer. It was a good thing they were numbered. I can't tell you how many times I dropped a deck of about 200 on the floor...

I first knew about the Hollerith punch cards during my first year in college. We used to have fun tripping the engineering students, making them drop the cards.

Later on I used them myself, and felt guilty for that.

I finally ran out of the excess cards I brought home after we got rid of our keypunch machines and card readers. They were perfect for making notes on.

ipconfig /all on a PC would indicate if have a problem.