Hundreds of thousands of computers will simultaneously lose access to the internet on July 9, unless their owners check for a virus that may have remained hidden for several years, the FBI has warned.
The so-called "internet doomsday" will come as the bureau turns off a server system its investigators installed in November, when they broke up an Estonian crime ring that was running a global internet advertising scam.
Since 2007, the six men had been using a "Trojan" virus - named after the mythical horse - to seize control of computers all over the world.
The virus, called "DNS Changer", would redirect the web browsers of victims from sites they wanted to visit to ones controlled by the gang.
Revenue from adverts tied to those sites is estimated to have earned the criminals US$14 million ($17.2 million) in commission.
