Router Hack Alert

[Lee B]

WASHINGTON -- The Federal Bureau of Investigation is asking everyone with a home router to do one small thing: Turn your router off and then back on again.

The agency issued a warning on Friday asking home Internet users and small business owners to reboot their routers to ward off a pernicious piece of malware called VPN Filter. The malware infects routers during the first stage of an attack that eventually gives hackers great control over the devices connected to the Internet. The malware has been linked to a group believed to be connected to the Russian military

Research from Cisco's Talos security group, published last week, estimates that 500,000 devices around the world may be affected by the malware, including routers made by major manufacturers such as TP-Link, Netgear and Linksys. While the FBI recently seized a critical part of the network that runs this attack, the agency still recommends that everyone reset their router, regardless of manufacturer, to cast a wider net.

Simply unplugging your router may not seem like it could do much for your security. But resetting the router sets this complicated malware back to stage one, said Ashley Stephenson of Corero Network Security. In its first stage, VPN Filter establishes a in a router, but it needs to talk to another part of the network to download the second stage of the attack.

Now that the FBI has control over part of the network, routers trying to enter that second stage will send information to the agency instead of hackers, Stephenson said.

Simply hitting the power button without updating their router, would still put users at risk, software experts warned. As a next step, they should download the latest firmware for their devices and change their password to further guard themselves against infection

 

[Possi]

Thanks! I posted this on my FB page, too.