NSA Warned Everyone to Reboot Their Routers

(staysafeonline.org)

33 points | by saikatsg 16 hours ago ago

23 comments

  • rayiner 7 hours ago ago

    I wonder what the prevalence of these IoT devices is doing to internet security. Your router firewall might prevent incoming connections, but these stupid devices are always dialing out to god knows where. Can that be used to compromise security?

    I recently installed deep packet inspection in my firewall and it’s quite illuminating to see all of what’s going on. Why are devices in my home connecting to India?

    • hollow-moe 7 hours ago ago

      I made a separate wifi network for the smart trash, they can't see each other and aren't allowed any ingress or egress. I then add individual firewall rules on a needed basis.

      • nemosaltat 4 hours ago ago

        This is the way. Mine’s called Io(shi)T.

  • goolz 12 hours ago ago

    Similar vibes to a single, older, creepy gentleman telling a group of young school children at the park not to talk to strangers.

  • throawayonthe 15 hours ago ago

    links to this NSA press release dated April 7th https://www.nsa.gov/Press-Room/Press-Releases-Statements/Pre...

  • Surac 12 hours ago ago

    so NSA installed a backdoor to each router and now needs you to restart it to open the backdoor?

    • hulitu 12 hours ago ago

      No, the old one wasn't good tested and it hang the router. They will send a new one OTA on the next reboot.

  • cmehdy 10 hours ago ago

    TP-link routers. Entirely unsurprising.

  • nubinetwork 13 hours ago ago

    "Replace outdated routers" yeah good luck with that, they're all banned.

    • ohnei 11 hours ago ago

      What happens if an American orders a router from Aliexpress? In the past the US generally ignored low volume end user imports..

    • rcbdev 10 hours ago ago

      > "Replace outdated routers" yeah good luck with that, they're all banned.

      Where on earth are routers banned?

  • 9 hours ago ago
    [deleted]
  • burnt-resistor 14 hours ago ago

    In this day and age, and we still lack formally-proven, FOSS/FOSHW, minimal consumer edge routers and WiFi APs.

    • unfitted2545 9 hours ago ago

      OpenWRT One? Not sure about AP's though.

    • mindslight 6 hours ago ago

      Personally I just gave up trying to maintain OpenWRT/whatever on the embedded ARM dumpster fire, and went back to using a generic Linux distro (NixOS) on amd64 machines for both router and APs (with appropriate minipcie wifi cards).

    • hulitu 12 hours ago ago

      This is by design. Those who control the past (network traffic), control the future (network traffic).

  • Craighead 12 hours ago ago

    Reminder, HN, you all live in the real world. Chinese state sponsored cyber threat actors use orb networks that are primarily made via strung together off the shelf routers. The literal companies that build and maintain these ORB networks also resell this capability to Russian military intelligence and cyber threat actors.

    • rglover 8 hours ago ago

      Was unfamiliar with orb networks. This [1] is a damn clever attack vector.

      [1] https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/chi...

      • mindslight 6 hours ago ago

        They just made up a fancy term for the age old proxy... Basically lifting the longstanding criticism of their "attribution" into their realm of bespoke nouns as if it's something exceptional.

        (I also found it extra annoying as my current working expansion of ORB is O-Ring Boss)

    • blitzar 11 hours ago ago

      I am interested in hearing more about the US state sponsored cyber threat actors

      • Craighead 10 hours ago ago

        Fast16, stuxnet, apt-c-40