The FBI has issued a dire warning to everyone who
has a router in their home. The Internet Crime Complaint Center sent a
rare Public Service Announcement declaring: "Foreign cyber actors have
compromised hundreds of thousands of home and office routers and other
networked devices worldwide."
The hackers are using VPNFilter malware to target
small office and home office routers, the FBI said. "VPNFilter is able
to render small office and home office routers inoperable," the FBI
warns. "The malware can potentially also collect information passing
through the router. Detection and analysis of the malware’s network
activity is complicated by its use of encryption."
The
feds recommends "any owner of small office and home office routers
reboot the devices to temporarily disrupt the malware and aid the
potential identification of infected devices." They also advise to
consider disabling remote management settings on devices, use
encryption, upgrade firmware and choose new and different passwords,
which is pretty much best practice anyway.
The
IC3, formerly known as the Internet Fraud Complaint Center was renamed
in October 2003 to include this kind of attack. Their stated mission "is
to provide the public with a reliable and convenient reporting
mechanism to submit information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation
concerning suspected Internet-facilitated criminal activity and to
develop effective alliances with law enforcement and industry partners."
Today, that means telling you to reboot your router, so hop to it.
