DOJ quietly removed Russian malware from routers in US homes and businesses

autotldr Bot , 5 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

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More than 1,000 Ubiquiti routers in homes and small businesses were infected with malware used by Russian-backed agents to coordinate them into a botnet for crime and spy operations, according to the Justice Department.

That malware, which worked as a botnet for the Russian hacking group Fancy Bear, was removed in January 2024 under a secret court order as part of “Operation Dying Ember,” according to the FBI’s director.

Unlike previous attacks by Fancy Bear—that the DOJ ties to GRU Military Unit 26165, which is also known as APT 28, Sofacy Group, and Sednit, among other monikers—the Ubiquiti intrusion relied on a known malware, Moobot.

“For the second time in two months, we’ve disrupted state-sponsored hackers from launching cyber-attacks behind the cover of compromised US routers,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco in a press release.

Christopher A. Wray, director of the FBI, expanded on the Fancy Bear operation and international hacking threats generally at the ongoing Munich Security Conference.

Malware said by the DOJ to be tied to the Chinese government was removed from SOHO routers by the FBI last month in similar fashion to the most recently revealed operation, targeting Cisco and Netgear devices that had mostly reached their end of life and were no longer receiving security patches.

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The original article contains 550 words, the summary contains 211 words. Saved 62%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

HearthCore , 5 months ago

It’s hard to take serious when it’s all due to default passwords… 🤦

Potatos_are_not_friends , 5 months ago

That’s not the fault of the government. The fact that they were able to do this without disruption or people even recognizing is a pretty big win.

suzune , 5 months ago

I think default passwords are not even enough. There must be some additional fuckup unmentioned. Usually such devices don’t expose the management interface publicly, so a password wouldn’t be enough.

ShellMonkey , 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

Unless the boxes actually where to get patches, which the article notes them as end of life, this is a largely pointless endeavor and the boxes will be reinfected shortly. We really need some kind of comprehensive education and notification system to let these owners know that their systems are vulnerable and have been actively exploited. Maybe take some portion of the military budget to create a fund and help people get new gear while they’re at it. A sizable chunk of people just want a box to work and once it’s set up the extent of any maintaining is to unplug it when the WiFi gets funky.

remotelove , 5 months ago

It’s easier to replace the malware with your own, honestly. (Bots do this all the time, actually.)

“Removed” is such a strong word and likely not used correctly here.

Edit: This isn’t a “conspiracy”. It’s a math game, TBH. And it’s exceedingly cheap.

Coreidan , 5 months ago

Unless the boxes actually where to get patches

Ummm, what?

Oha , 5 months ago

The internet would be so much better if no one ran eol devices

femboy_bird , 5 months ago

The world would be better if computers came by default with a tty and a manual, this would keep most people who aren’t smart enough to know how to be safe online offline, it would also force our society to be able to function offline

ShellMonkey , 5 months ago

Can’t remember the name but I recall one of what you’re talking about, botnet that actually made it impossible for their competitors to retake the host. In theory the 'good guy’s could do that too, but still better to just find a way to fix it without leaving anything behind.