Russians Attack Wifi Routers
On Friday, May 25th of 2018 the FBI released a statement urging "any owner of small office and home office routers" to reboot their devices. In doing so, this will reduce the exposure of malware from Russian based groups including “Fancy Bear” and “Sofacy Group” (whom you may remember from the 2016 election) according to a post by the Daily Beast. This malware attack is known as the "VPNFilter" and was reportedly found in 500,000+ routers and like devices in 54 countries by the Cisco TALOS cybersecurity team on June 6th.
The statement was released to the public soon after the FBI seized a server dedicated to spreading the vicious "VPNFilter" malware attack on unsuspecting individuals. The seized systems were actually hosted on the domain called "ToKnowAll.com". (The name itself screams privacy invasion.) Once the router has been rebooted, the malware attackers will have difficulty trying to re-infect the devices afterwards. According to a statement by the Department of Justice, rebooting will help "identify and remediate the infection worldwide", by tracking communications sent by infected devices after they're rebooted.
The Cisco TALOS cybersecurity team has shared with the public a list of routers that have been infected and therefore, are susceptible to the VPNFilter. On the list of compromised routers brands like Netgear, Linksys, MikroTik, and TP-Link were among the 500,000+ infected. If you own any of these router brands, we highly recommend for you to not only reboot your router, but to consider replacing your router with our network security service powered by Fortigate.
TechKnowledgey uses Fortinet to protect customers against malware attacks such as the Russian based "VPNFilter". Why? Because Fortinet is credited with over 528 zero-day discoveries - a record unmatched by any other security service. So, you could say that we use the best of the best in network security for our SMB customers.
If we learned anything from the last election, it is that we as Americans have to step up our Network Security game and stop making excuses for why we don't accurately protect ourselves from cyber criminals. Ignoring the problem will only make a business vulnerable to cyber attacks that could cost millions.
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Boyd Smith
This article originally appeared on the TechKnowledgey Blog.
TechKnowledgey, Inc. is a midwest IT company creating successful hybrid cloud solutions, integrated IT services, and managed print services powered by IoT for their customers. TechKnowledgey services a wide reach from its headquarters in Goshen, Indiana.