My periodic reminder to reboot your routers at least 1x/week.
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My periodic reminder to reboot your routers at least 1x/week.
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The reason: Router malware has grown increasingly sophisticated as nation states like China and Russia have jumped all in over the past 5 or 10 years. Actors working on behalf of these governments regularly build large IoT botnets for use in attacks against targets they want to hack. These bots are ideal because they have US-based IP addresses, which generally have good reputations.
Hacker free-for-all fights for control of home and office routers everywhere
How and why nation-state hackers and cybercriminals coexist in the same router botnet.
Ars Technica (arstechnica.com)
Despite the sophistication, the vast majority of router malware lacks persistence, meaning the device is disinfected each time is rebooted. Security firms have regularly advised the period rebooting of routers. So has CISA:
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And no, it's not paranoid for everyday people to think nation states are trying to hack their routers. It happens all the time. Nation states infect routers opportunistically and often in large numbers. They do this not because they're targeting the router owner. They do it to use the router to hack government agencies, universities, etc. of interest. Everyone's threat model should include "nation state actors have taken over my router."