The July Internet Shutdown – Between the Lines

I’m going to attempt to write this as best I can to accommodate both the laypersons and tech-savvy alike, as it affects everyone.  I don’t want to ostracize those whom don’t fully understand the technical aspects.  If I seem to you to be rambling, just scroll down a little bit as opposed to not encompassing yourself in the crucial information.

A bit of history

In the beginning of 2007 a Trojan (a program that poses beneficial, or intended, that is actually a piece of malicious software), now called DNSChanger, allegedly infected, at it’s peak, 4 million computers worldwide.  DNSChanger modified the DNS (I will explain in depth later for those that do not know what this is) settings of the infected computer to redirect many random web requests to companies and affiliates that paid for traffic.  It is speculated that the individuals responsible have acquired $14 million through this endeavor.
In November of 2011 law enforcement authorities working in tandem with the FBI, as part of what they called “Operation Ghost Click”, arrested six of the seven individuals in Estonia allegedly responsible for the Trojan.  Roughly 100 servers posing as legit DNS servers were seized.  This (allegedly) posed as a conundrum to the FBI; all of the infected computers would no longer have access to the internet with these servers being shut down, so they (allegedly ;)) opted to fire up servers in their place via Internet Systems Consortium, a non-profit organization, to allow for the infected to disinfect.  This was to go on for four months- March 8th these servers were to be shut down.  But then the prosecutor requested an extension with the Southern District of New York in light of all of those that were still (again, allegedly) infected.  This extension ends on July 9th.

A bit of technical information

A DNS (domain name service) server is a lot like a phone book.  You know the person’s name, and use it to find their phone number.  In this scenario, you know the website, e.g., www.google.com.  Your computer asks the DNS server for www.google.com’s ‘phone number’, or IP address, then your computer connects to the IP address it was given and requests the information for which you asked.
An IP address is, this is a mere compendium for those of lackluster technical background, number that identifies yours, or another’s, computer on the worldwide web.  Your IP address, a unique number, specific to you is given to you by your ISP (internet service provider).
The way the DNSChanger Trojan would work is that it changed the DNS servers, typically assigned for you by your ISP, to one of their ominous DNS servers.  When you would, for instance, attempt to connect to www.startpage.com, instead of giving you the proper IP address (216.218.239.178) it would give you the IP address to one of their affiliates advertisement servers that, in turn, would generate revenue for the developers of the Trojan.

Let us talk of pragmatic solutions

The typical, and regularly practiced, remedy for such a situation is that the internet service provider of the infected user blocks the users access to the internet and sends a notice to said subscriber informing them of their apparent infection, along with information regarding its resolution.  In past occurrences at this point the user would acquire the services of a computer technician and the technician would fix the problem.  The user would then notify their internet service provider that they have remedied the issue, and service would be restored.
The former was not the route taken.  As reported by the Huffington Post, the FBI opted to spend $87,000 of tax payers’ money to run these “clean servers” for 8 months.  How ‘kind’ of the FBI.  But this is not at all typical behavior of the FBI- to, seemingly, immediately spring into action on behalf of the American people, or any people for that matter.  But I’ll delve more into the typical behavior of the FBI when it comes to Americans and the internet later down the line.

Let us discuss numbers

As I stated toward the beginning- at its peak the Trojan infected 4,000,000 users worldwide and to this day allegedly still infects 500,000 in the United States.  Worldwide, there are 2,267,233,742 internet users.  In the United States there are 313,232,044 internet users.  At its peak it infected 0.176% of internet users worldwide. Right now it, allegedly, infects 0.159% of internet subscribers in the United States.  Since when has the FBI expressed concern for even 65% of any populous, let alone 0.159%?  One assumed theory is that they care because six people are rolling around in $14 million dollars.  But the other, more probable reason will come later; we’re only talking numbers right now.
And on the issue of numbers… let’s talk about the alleged 500,000 people in the US that are still infected.  Doing a bit of research within the Antivirus companies’ reports, for instance Norton- reporting DNSChanger (they report it as Trojan.Flush.K) as having only 0-49 infections.  The other top manufacturers I checked (McAfee, AVG, Kaspersky, Trend Micro) weren’t as specific as to an infection count, but all reported infection level as low, and all reported impact as low.

ILOVEYOU

I remember back in 2000- May 5th to be exact; The meanest, most wide-spread worm in history was launched.  The ILOVEYOU worm.  This was a relentless digital beast of such ferocity that had never before been seen.  Within 10 days it infected more that 50 million users.  And oh the maliciousness! Overwriting images and corrupting data.  It was estimated that it caused over $5.5 billion worldwide.  But where was the FBI on their white horses with an attempted intervention?  Vacant.  They caught the individuals involved and that was it.
The irony?  The DNSChanger is not destructive.  It merely causes acute, isolated internet access disruption for the user infected.

Let us whisper of entropy

Ahh, yes.  We have come to the proverbial “meat and potatoes” of the real issue.  Free access to information by the masses.  “How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think.” –Adolf Hitler
But how better would it be for governments that the people they administer know not about what to think?  Much better.  When feigned truths float amongst us like clouds they escape even the greatest reach, but when said truths lie at our feet like weeds they face the sickle of us all.
In June of 2010 Israel and the United States released a worm, called Stuxnet, into the infrastructure networks of Iran to disrupt their uranium enrichment process.  Of course this wasn’t admitted by the establishments, but it was quite obvious.  It was another “false flag attack” for the United States to reign in more control.  I remember when all of this was going on our government was demanding stricter enforcement and control over the internet.  There has always been the desire for an “internet kill switch”.  We saw evidence of the internet killswitch in early 2011 during the staged Egypt revolution.  But most people didn’t hear about that.  Nor did they understand that another form, a server-side, DNS based form was being tested when the Department of Homeland Security “accidentally” shutdown 84,000 websites in one incident and 76 more websites in a separate incident.
It didn’t take the FBI 4 years (outbreak of DNSChanger in 2007 until the arrests in 2011) to track down the culprits.  It should have taken 6 months at best.  When you’re dealing with so many financial ties and ISP subpoenas everything you need is right in front of you.  They were just following standard operating procedure- in the words of that piece of globalist trash Rahm Emanuel “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”
So they’ve set the precedent with their own manufactured cyberterror attacks.  They’ve shown that they’ve accomplished the ability to do a full internet shut down in Egypt, a server-side shut down via the 84,000+ websites they simultaneously shut down as they say “by accident”.  And now this is just the live beta test for the client-side shut down.  This Trojan is nothing of significance.  This measure in which they are taking is absurd.  This article, I hope, is the kind hand reaching out from the ether, lifting the veil from your eyes and pointing you in the direction of truth.

[Featured image from clevercrunch.com]