FBI Urges Public to Reboot Routers After Russian Malware Report

The FBI issued a warning this week to consumers, advising them to reboot their routers after a report from Cisco revealed the possibility of a Russian malware destroying the devices with a single command.

Cisco’s Talos researchers said that around 500,000 Linksys, MikroTik, Netgear, and TP-Link branded routers may have been infected with the VPNFilter malware which is thought to be spread by Russian state-sponsored hacking group Sofacy. It is said that VPNFilter is capable of wiping a portion of the device’s firmware, rendering it useless, and attackers can selectively destroy a single device or wipe all infected devices at once.

The researchers said that Stage 2 and Stage 3 components of VPNFilter can be removed by rebooting the device. However, Stage 1 will persist after a reboot and can be used by the attackers to reinfect the device.

Source: ZDNet