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News

Internet flaw could let hackers control Web

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Laptops

Gone phishing: The problem could potentially allow people to be directed to imitation web pages.

Credit: iStockphoto

Unprecedented collaboration

"A lot of people really stepped up and showed how collaboration can protect customers."
Automated updating should protect most personal computers. Microsoft released the fix in a software update package Tuesday.

A push is on to make sure company networks and Internet service providers make certain their computer servers are impervious to web traffic hijackings using the DNS attack.

The patch can't be "reverse engineered" by hackers interested in figuring out how to take advantage of the flaw, technical details of which are being kept secret for a month to give companies time to update computers.

"This is a pretty important day," said Jeff Moss, founder of a premier Black Hat computer security conference held annually in Las Vegas.

"We are seeing a massive multi-vendor patch for the entire addressing scheme for the internet - the kind of a flaw that would let someone trying to go to Google.com be directed to wherever an attacker wanted."

Readers' comments

DNS Checker

I went to doxpara.com and checked my DNS using the DNS checker they provide. Turned out to be safe.