Relief! Malware deadline over, very few knocked offline

Washington: If you’re reading this online, you’re fine. The day that was supposed to see thousands of people knocked off the Internet has arrived, but only a few people were affected.

Thousands of Internet users across the US and beyond waited too long or simply didn’t believe warnings that they would lose access to the Internet just after midnight because of malware that took over computers around the world more than a year ago.

At 12:01 am (0401 GMT) today, the FBI turned off Internet servers that were functioning as a temporary safety net to keep infected computers online for the past eight months. A court order the agency had gotten to keep the servers running expired, and was not renewed.

FBI officials have been tracking the number of computers they believe still may be infected by the malware. As of last night, there were about 41,800 in the US, down from 45,600 on 4 July. Worldwide, the total is roughly 211,000 infected.

An estimated 2.3 billion people around the world use the Internet, according to Internet World Stats.

Considering that there are millions of Internet users across the country, several thousand losing access isn’t a big deal unless you are one of them.

As the deadline approached, Internet service providers such as AT&T Inc and Time Warner Cable Inc set up their own safety nets to allow the affected computers to continue to access the Internet.

AT&T said only a “small percentage” of its customers were affected by the virus. To make sure they can continue to access the Internet, the company will maintain legitimate Internet servers for them through the end of the year.

This, said spokesman Mark Siegel, gives people “adequate time” to remove the virus from their computers and avoid service interruption.

Time Warner Cable would not say how many of its customers were affected by the virus, but spokesman Justin Venech said the company also set up its own servers to ensure they can get online. Time Warner has no specific deadline, but the company will notify people who are affected so they can fix their
computers.

Verizon Communications Inc said it will “continue to provide extended support to our customers during the month of July – while continuing to instruct them on the necessary actions they must take to resolve the issue on their computers.”

In South Korea, there were no reports from affected computers today. As many as 80 computers there are believed to be infected with the malware that may cause problems in Web surfing, down from 1,798 computers in February, according to the government.