Published: April 25, 2024 on our newsletter Security Fraud News & Alerts Newsletter.
You may have heard that U.S. Officials testified in front of Congress recently. They noted that a hacker group from China, known as Volt Typhoon placed malware on hundreds of routers, both home and office products intending to use them for launching points at some point in the future against U.S. critical infrastructure. The majority of the affected products were outdated Cisco or NetGear that were no longer supported by the manufacturers and therefore no longer subject to updates or patches.
The officials testified that the Chinese hackers used the products to hide their identities with intent to lie in wait until ready to attack.
While we aren’t sure what will happen, there are actions one can take to help limit damage. This is a stark reminder of how important it is to keep all hardware products updated. Once they are no longer supported by manufacturers, whether software products such as Microsoft Windows or Apple MacOS or hardware products like routers, they need to be kept up-to-date to avoid being compromised with malware.
Another weakness that contributes to this and other attacks is the continued use of default passwords when new products are installed. These also provide an easy entry point for potential attackers.
While the U.S. officials are trying to manage the relationship with China, the rest of us should do our part by ensuring we care for our own networks. This includes changing default passwords right away to something strong and difficult to guess, both for a person and for credential-stuffing software. It’s also important to make sure all hardware and software is updated as soon as it is installed. Especially the case for hardware, it often sits on store or warehouse shelves for a long time before being purchased. In that time, firmware and software updates are often released. Those need to be applied immediately upon installation.
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