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DNS malware is back in the news as it has been estimated that a total of 300,000 machines will no longer be able to access internet due to the malware from Monday. Despite FBI’s crack-down and arrest of the creators of the malware, the malware continues to infect many machines. A lot of users still seem unaware of its hazards which puts their machines at imminent risk. Here we have prepared a guide how to check if your system is infected and how to fix it.

The DNS malware had been routing the traffic of infected machines to different DNS servers. In this way, the malware made these machines dependent upon its servers in order to access internet. And now that FBI is shutting down these DNS servers on July 9, the machines which are still infected with the malware will no longer be able to access internet.

If you don’t know whether or not your machine is infected with the DNSChanger malware, or if you are aware of it and wish to remove it from your machine, here’s some help. First, if you have been warned while using Google,  Facebook or any other prominent website that your system may have been compromised, there is a high likelihood that your system is infected.

To further confirm the presence of DNS malware on your system, simply check your machine’s DNS settings.

For Mac:

• Open ‘Network System preferences.’
• Then against each network service, select it
• Hit ‘Advanced’ button.
• Now select the ‘DNS’ tab for each of the network service
• This will show a list of DNS servers. Note down the list.

For Windows:

• Select ‘Run’ from Windows menu or the command-line interface.
• Enter the following command ‘ipconfig/all.’
• Hit enter and you will be presented with the DNS servers listed for your system.

Once you have the list of DNS servers for your machine, simply navigate to FBI’s DNS Checker web page here. On the web page you can check the list of your DNS servers and see if any of them is part of the network of rogue DNS servers.

If your list comes out clean on the FBI checking page, you have no need to worry. However, if any of the servers listed for your system are part of the rogue network, you need to install and up-to-date anti-malware scanner to remove the malware from your system.

Source: FBI

Courtesy: CNET