A few weeks back, I told you about my experiences in dealing with Operation Ghost Click. For those of you that need a refresher, Operation Ghost Click resulted when a group of individuals, who have since been arrested, seemingly thought it was clever to run an Internet fraud ring that resulted in millions of computers being infected with the DNSChanger Trojan malware. The malware caused infected systems to be redirected to fraudulent servers set up by those who were arrested. The FBI intervened and implemented its own temporary, secure servers as a replacement for the manipulated servers, providing the infected users 120 days to rid their systems of the malware. On March 8, 2012, those servers will be shut down. Are you prepared?

What’s Next

The FBI sent out several notifications to those possibly affected by the DNSChanger Trojan, and although some efforts were made to restore the systems, there is still an abundance of computers out there that contain the malware. If the affected systems don’t correct the issue before the these temporary DNS servers are taken down, they won’t be able to get anywhere on the Web. Reports have indicated that those set to be cut-off include many Fortune 500 companies and several government agencies.

What You Can Do

Although the deadline is fast approaching, there is still time to find out the status of your network. Details of measures that can be taken to identify whether or not your network has been compromised can be found here. It would also be beneficial for network managers to make a clean sweep of your network and ensure there are no traces of any malware on any associated devices. The FBI caught the bad guys and have a temporary fix in place. Now, it’s your turn to do your part to help permanently fix the problem. Don’t be left in the dark.