Half of Fortune 500 firms infected with DNS Changer

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9223941/Half_of_Fortune_500_firms_infected_with_DNS_Changer

By Gregg Keizer
Computerworld
February 2, 2012

Half of all Fortune 500 companies and major U.S. government agencies own 
computers infected with the "DNS Changer" malware that redirects users 
to fake websites and puts organizations at risk of information theft, a 
security company said today.

DNS Changer, which at its peak was installed on more than four million 
Windows PCs and Macs worldwide -- a quarter of them in the U.S. alone -- 
was the target of a major takedown organized by the U.S. Department of 
Justice last November.

The takedown and accompanying arrests of six Estonian men, dubbed 
"Operation Ghost Click," was the culmination of a two-year 
investigation, although some security researchers have been tracking the 
botnet since 2006. As part of the operation, the FBI seized control of 
more than 100 command-and-control (C&C) servers hosted at U.S. data 
centers.

According to Tacoma, Wash.-based Internet Identity (IID), which provides 
security services to enterprises, half of the firms in the Fortune 500, 
and a similar percentage of major U.S. government agencies, harbor one 
or more computers infected with DNS Changer.

[...]


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