US Government Warns That Russia State Hackers Are Coming After Your Router

CISA and allied governments are warning users to secure their routers as Russian state-backed hackers continue compromising the devices and turning them into proxy nodes to disguise attacks against critical infrastructure. The advisory urges users to disable outdated SNMP versions, use strong passwords, update firmware, and turn off unnecessary router services to reduce the risk of being swept into these botnets. Ars Technica reports: "Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Center 16 cyber actors continue to exploit poorly configured and vulnerable networking devices worldwide, opportunistically compromising multiple critical infrastructure sector networks," the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said Monday. The hacking groups are tracked under various names, including Berserk Bear, Energetic Bear, Crouching Yeti, Dragonfly, Ghost Blizzard, and Static Tundra. The advisory was co-issued by governments from around the world, including Australia, Denmark, New Zealand, and the UK.

The primary means of compromise the agency warned about was hackers scanning IP ranges with active Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) agents that accept common or default authentication credentials. These scans are run by the very sorts of router botnets the actors are trying to enroll the targeted device in. By sending malicious traffic from spoofed addresses, the hackers can use the SNMP agent on poorly configured routers to run malware. SNMP allows users to collect and organize information about managed networking devices or to modify that information to change device behavior.

With control of a device, the hackers then use it as an exit node when probing or attacking targets in the communications, defense, energy, financial services, and government sectors. By funneling the malicious traffic through a benign-appearing device on a trustworthy IP address, the attackers are able to lower the chances of getting blocked by firewalls and other security defenses. Monday's advisory made no mention of identical operations carried out in recent years by China. So-called residential proxies are also a go-to tool used by financially motivated criminal hackers to obscure their true IP address. In many cases, these sorts of proxies are made up of millions of streaming devices that are sold with preloaded malware.

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