Your Router May Be Helping Hackers Take Over the Internet

Your cheap, innocuous wireless router may be part of an evil army of devices collecting your information with the aim of shutting down the internet according to the FBI.

According to the FBI, this threat, which reads like the conceit of the Terminator franchise, is because “foreign cyber actors have compromised hundreds of thousands of home and office routers and other networked devices worldwide.”

The solution? To reboot your router, to avoid an impending malware attack. If that’s not an impetus, consider this. The American Domestic Intelligence unit suspects that this malware would observe what you read, the content you share and the porn you watch!

Here’s what you must do to combat the evil designs of your router:

• Reboot your router to to “temporarily disrupt the malware and aid the potential identification of infected devices. Turn it on and off again.
• If you want to go the extra length to safeguard your filthy browsing history, you should disable your router’s remote management settings.
• If there is a driver update to your router available on the internet, this is the perfect time to do it.
• Change the password to access your router’s settings (if you still remember it).
• Every routers is unique in its own way. Read the manual that came along with your router and understand the ways to configure its settings. You can access the router settings by typing “http://192.168.1.1/” in the address bar of your web browser.
• Talk to your router. Convince it not to go to the dark side.

The primary site of the infections was Ukraine, though it could have spread to any country.

US agencies claim the hackers come from a group called “Sofacy” or “Fancy Bear”- which according to cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike is associated with the Russian military intelligence.

Sofacy is the same agency that has been associated with the infamous hacking that took place during the 2016 American presidential elections. So yeah, your router might be working for the Russians.