The FBI has pulled a stunning success in the battle against cyber crime, and now it’s asking everyone with a home router to reboot it as soon as possible.
Rebooting a home router will temporarily eliminate a part of malware causing the malware to call out for instructions, maximizing the opportunity to identify and remediate the infection worldwide in the time available before the group behind the malware can learn of the vulnerability in their command-and-control infrastructure.
The “Sofacy Group” has been identified as the group behind the malware. The malware targets government, military, security organizations and other targets of perceived intelligence value and uses home and small office routers to do so.
The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security said they have also jointly notified trusted ISPs. The Department and the FBI also encourage users and administrators to review the Cisco blog post on VPNFilter, available here, for recommendations and to ensure that their devices are updated with the latest patches.