I'm honestly surprised this hasn't been put somewhere here. It just came to my attention within the last hour, though it's apparently been a threat for around three weeks. According to some network researcher, there is a critical bug in the DNS system where anyone can create a fake site, hijack its name, and your computer would never know the difference. The even worse part: Every ISP in the world can be abused like this. Thankfully, many ISPs patched their service, making it impossible for this to happen. However, some of the biggest names in Internet Provision such as Time Warner Cable and AT&T still have done nothing about it.

If you're not quite sure what I'm talking about because of all the acronyms and technical babble, here's a simple version: Some bad dudes have hacked the interwebs and now everyone is at risk.

Whether or not this flaw has been used maliciously yet, I don't know. What I do know is if it were to be used correctly, (or incorrectly, as the case may be) the high levels of identity theft, malware attacks and other crimes would cause an end to the internet as we know it. The already feeble trust would be broken completely, business would no longer flourish here, and as a result, millions of dollars could be lost worldwide. It is highly likely even trillions could be lost.

So what can you do to protect yourself? Thankfully, there are ways. For one, before doing anything else important on the internet, be it check your stocks, do some online banking, or heck, even send an email, go here. Thanks to the internet good guys, you can check your DNS server to make sure that it's secure. If it isn't, or if you're unsure, call your ISP and ask them about this. Step two in protecting yourself is using OpenDNS. According to them, they've made sure that they're safe from this, and fortunately, I've been using OpenDNS for a long while now. My internet has been going very slow lately, so I admit, I'm a bit worried. Hopefully the fact that I've been using OpenDNS for well over a year now has me protected.

I guess when all the ISPs in the world patch their service, we can consider this threat over, but for now, I suppose staying on your toes is the best option.

i've heard many sites got hacked.. i think they were working hard patching all those problems.

Bleh it said I may be safe but my firewall is blocking some crap.

Is BT affected by this issue?

Not British Telecom?