With only two weeks until the recently seized Gameover Zeus botnet is likely to be functioning again, the UK’s National Crime Agency has published urgent advice on how to protect computers against the Gameover Zeus and CryptoLocker trojans.
Unfortunately, the page hosting this urgent advice is proving rather troublesome to view:
When it can be viewed, the NCA’s advice page at www.getsafeonline.org/nca/ outlines the threat and lists a set of tools which can be used to check for the presence of malware. The page also notes that the NCA “cannot over-stress the importance of taking these steps immediately” and “You must follow the advice on this page straight away”.
With expectations of high traffic and the need for users to act immediately, it is surprising that this important information was not hosted on a platform which was capable of handling the load. Last night’s tweet by @GetSafeOnline suggests that the performance issues are being caused by lots of traffic; there are no indications of an attack against the site.
and the final hop in a traceroute is spc1-barn6-0-0-cust460.asfd.broadband.ntl.com
The FBI believes the Gameover Zeus trojan is responsible for more than one million computer infections, resulting in financial losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars. A Russian man believed to be involved in these attacks has been added to the FBI’s Cyber’s Most Wanted list.
Since referring to the NCA’s advice page in an article yesterday, the BBC’s Dave Lee has mirrored the content on evernote so others can see it.
It won’t fill people with confidence if the UK gov-backed site for anti-hack advice can’t keep itself online.
— Dave Lee (@DaveLeeBBC) June 3, 2014