Internet could disappear for some on Monday - FOX Carolina 21

Some people may not be able to surf the internet on Monday thanks to some bad software, or malware, that has infected many computers.

It's the FBI that's shutting down the servers that could kick them offline.

Technology experts said computers could be linked to the hacked servers, and users would never know it without doing a special scan. Otherwise, those people could find out Monday when their browsers won't take them to any web page.

"It's not that their internet's going to break," said Matthew Rydzfski, co-owner of Premier PC, a Greenville-based computer network managing company. "It's that when they go to look up websites, their computer won't know how to find them if they have this infection."

Whether a computer has the infection or not, Rydzfski said it's important to not only have anti-virus but also anti-malware software that regularly scans computers for hacker-dropped infections.

It was the ads that this malware in particular targeted because, Rydzfski said, the hackers wanted to make money by re-routing the computer to their internet servers, where they bought ads instead of the legitimate ones users were supposed to see online.

Rydzfski said this malware wasn't designed to steal people's information, but other malware can be dangerous.

So when the FBI discovered the hacked servers, they seized them, and they've been cleaning it of malware since. On Monday, the FBI will get rid of those servers altogether. If a computer was routed there, that means the computer won't have internet.

To make sure the internet doesn't disappear, people can do one of two main options. Either find a new server, which may take some technical know-how, or go to www.dcwg.org. It's an FBI-recommended site with links to anti-malware software. That software should be run to scan computers to revert them back to their old servers and get rid of the malware.

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