The FBI warned on Friday that foreign cyber criminals had compromised "hundreds of thousands" of home and small office router devices around the world which direct traffic on the internet by forwarding data packets between computer networks. (source Reuters News)

The warning followed a court order Wednesday that allowed the FBI to seize a website that the hackers planned to use to give instructions to the routers. Though that cut off malicious communications, it still left the routers infected, and Friday’s warning was aimed at cleaning up those machines.Infections were detected in more than 50 countries, though the primary target for further actions was probably Ukraine, the site of many recent infections and a longtime cyberwarfare battleground.

Cisco Systems Inc said the hacking campaign targeted devices from Belkin International’s Linksys, MikroTik, Netgear Inc, TP-Link and QNAP. An FBI official told Reuters that the kinds of devices known to be affected by the hack were purchased by users at electronic stores or online. However, the FBI was not ruling out the possibility that routers provided to customers by internet service companies could also be affected, the official added.

What should you do?

1. Restart / Reboot your Router, wait 30 seconds before switching in on again.

2. People should consider disabling remote-management settings, changing passwords and upgrading to the latest firmware.

If you have never upgrade your routers software or changed the existing router password that came with your router or the password on you cable providers router. This is how you do it.

If you are renting your router from you Cable/ISP, go to their website for instructions on how to update their router.

If you purchase your own router....

Your router came with an instruction book. To log-in to that router you'll find they give you a http://www....... URL to log-in into. In your router booklet you'll see USERNAME, and PASSWORD to login into the URL (http:/www....) its usual admin for USERNAME and password for Password. Once you've log-in into the main page of your router, you should see a bulletin of sorts telling you have Firmware upgrades... pay attention to what you agree with when you up grade your router... because Router companies are now also asking to accesses your data. You can update without giving them permission to access your data via your router. If you say no to allowing your router to access your data, firmware updates will occur.

Also, its best to change your password to your Router, 16 charaters, numbers, letters and even a space should keep you pretty secure. Write down your password for safe keeping and know password(s) are case senstive. On most Router, Password tab can be found in a column to the left of the main page. Also its best to change the password that gives you access to your Router the.... USERNAME & PASSWORD.

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[Edited 5/26/18 16:05pm]

Reboot & update your Routers folks... this malware ain't no joke.

Oh man. Does this include a basic Linksys router from Walmart? What does the upgrade do? I doubt if I have the instructions, moved a lot. What if you buy a new one?

"Change your password to your router" and "change the password that gives you access to your Router", so those should be 2 different passwords?

poppys said:

Oh man. Does this include a basic Linksys router from Walmart? What does the upgrade do? I doubt if I have the instructions, moved a lot. What if you buy a new one?

"Change your password to your router" and "change the password that gives you access to your Router", so those should be 2 different passwords?

https://www.linksys.com/us/

I'm going to assume you live in the USA. If so go to the linksys link above and look up your router/ product model. When you purchased your router, you should have registered because Linksys would have emailed when they had updates for their router.

To get to your information on your router, you have to connected to Linksys website to access your router so you can update firmware, change password and/or to see what devices that are connected to your router Here a link to some of the default username & default password Linksys have used in the past and are still using: https://portforward.com/r...inksys.htm

Goes to prove if I was driving by your home I could access your router via the default username and default password. If you've never access your routers info, chances are you have FIRMWARE updates. So those defaults names should be changed when you purchased your router. I'd say start with rebooting your router, most routers have a on and off button. If your doesn't, unplug your router for the wall, wait 30 seconds plug it back it back int. It will take a couple of seconds if not a mintue for your router to boot up to full fucntion.

Source: The New York Times

F.B.I's Urgent Request: Reboot Your Router to Stop Russian Malware.

It's on the network news here this morning. Thanks for the router info. I will reboot this morning, old hand at that.

it is okay I got a pop-up and I called Microsoft tech support and they were able to remotely scam my computer and found some vviruses and they fixed each and everything and for $149