{"id":320,"date":"2018-05-25T09:24:13","date_gmt":"2018-05-25T13:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/?p=320"},"modified":"2018-05-25T09:24:32","modified_gmt":"2018-05-25T13:24:32","slug":"do-home-users-know-how-to-adequately-protect-themselves-from-cyber-threats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/do-home-users-know-how-to-adequately-protect-themselves-from-cyber-threats\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Home Users Know How to Adequately Protect Themselves From Cyber Threats?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cisco Systems earlier this week released a report from its Talos cyber intelligence unit. It contained a warning of 500,000 routers and storage devices in 54 countries that have been infected with malware. Their findings (https:\/\/blog.talosintelligence.com\/2018\/05\/VPNFilter.html<\/a>) pointed to the Russian government as having sponsored the hack, calling it \u201cVPNFilter,\u201d and that the software was simply waiting for activation. With a high preponderance of these devices in the Ukraine, it seems that an attack might be pending, or at least imminent.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t bore you with the details (and they are voluminous), but the recommendations for how to thwart the hackers are quite interesting. End users are instructed to reboot their routers, modems, and network attached storage (NAS) devices to the factory default state and then to install the latest firmware. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are instructed to reboot routers and cable modems for their customers and to ensure the devices are patched. Those two steps should, for all intents and purposes, knock out any of the malware that may have infected the devices.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s my question: How many home users \u2013 or business owners \u2013 know how to perform those two steps? I do, because it is something I learned a long time ago as part of my job. But I can\u2019t see asking any of my clients to do that. For one thing, the recommendations didn\u2019t take into account the main task of saving<\/strong> existing settings \u2013 or at least writing them down \u2013 so they could be recreated after the device was flashed and rebooted.<\/p>\n

In a \u201cbest case scenario\u201d I can imagine someone was using a Linksys modem they purchased from a big box store and they didn\u2019t configure anything; they simply followed the installation instructions. But in all likelihood, the SSID (i.e., the broadcast name) of their Wi-Fi is going to change. That means all of their wireless devices \u2013 computers, printers, tablets, and phones \u2013 will also need to be reset.<\/p>\n

The report acknowledges that most of these devices are what we frequently call \u201cset it and forget it,\u201d meaning that they are expected to simply do their job once they\u2019ve been installed. My concern about the recommendations centers on the fact that most individuals have no idea<\/strong> how to obtain the current firmware for these network attached devices. It isn\u2019t very obvious from any of the manufacturers\u2019 literature (and these include Linksys, TP-Link, and Netgear) that this is a task anyone should ever consider doing.<\/p>\n

Granted a half-million devices is only a small drop in the bucket in terms of world-wide network device distribution. Yet it seems we have entered into a new \u201cnormal\u201d for what people need to do \u2013 and learn \u2013 in order to better protect themselves from cyber security threats.<\/p>\n

Thanks and safe computing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cisco Systems earlier this week released a report from its Talos cyber intelligence unit. It contained a warning of 500,000 routers and storage devices in 54 countries that have been infected with malware. Their findings (https:\/\/blog.talosintelligence.com\/2018\/05\/VPNFilter.html) pointed to the Russian government as having sponsored the hack, calling it \u201cVPNFilter,\u201d and that the software was simply …<\/span> Read More →<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,3,40,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everyone","category-home-users","category-security","category-small-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":321,"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions\/321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}