You may have read that the FBI suggested that everyone reboot the router in their home. There has been quite a bit of misinformation about the internet, viruses and what is going on that you should be aware of. Humans take up approximately 38% of all bandwidth, with just about 1/3 search engine traffic and other automated activity. The remainder of all of the internet traffic is illicit activity, including automated hacking tools pointed at all of us.  The connection you share with your cell phone and the one that your child plays games on is under constant attack by automated tools. One you  can read more about is “autosploit” https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/02/threat-or-menace-autosploit-tool-sparks-fears-of-empowered-script-kiddies/

 

When we talk about Internet Service provider routers most have two logins. One of them you have access to, which is limited in what you can do to the router. The other is the same for all of the routers the provider distributes and its login and password is published all over the internet.  The FBI warning included rebooting and updating home-based routers as well. Many of the home routers, the ones that you can buy from electronic stores and the internet, have flaws. Some can be outright hacked from the outside, meaning the raw internet. Most can be attacked from the Wi-Fi side, there is really nothing that is not hackable that is not powered on. This leaves a question, why leave these things on when we are not using them?

You should always update all of your devices. Some of the devices in your home may not have an update, the electronics industry has a horrible track record with post-consumer updates. I have worked for a class action law firm that has brought suit ageist the electronics industry for not adhering to its published warranty period. Hence, I learned that it is common for manufacturers to deny the responsibility of failures of products let alone devices that have computers running inside of them without an antivirus or being updateable.

Much of this hysteria is overusing devices to create DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks. Examples of these are becoming more often and more severe, with a growing number of devices being put into homes without any way to update them. Some of these you may have heard of like smart televisions or newer Wi-Fi lightbulbs or control pads. Any item that uses Wi-Fi is technically a computer also, even if the manufacturer never intended for it to be used that way.

The simple way to control all of this is to deny access to the internet by turning off the router. You might want to consider adding addition routers for greater protection as well. I recommend a separate router for all of your WI-FI devices in your home, not your phone or computer but the other things that dont need to talk to the internet all of the time. Those can be turned off until it is needed, have another one for yourself, to separate your kids activities and their viruses on computers and games systems they use.

Perhaps this might be a good time to invest in a clapper. All of my life I have been wondering what good that item is. It is right up there with DVD re-winders, for practical uses and after all Alexia and Echo won’t work to turn the WIFI Router back to further eavesdrop on your conversations.  Yes it does that too.