EZ MSP Blog

Chances are that when you signed up for Internet service through your Internet service provider, or ISP, they hooked you up with a router that you would use to broadcast your wireless network’s signal around your office. While this is all well and good, we think you have valid reasons to replace that router with one that is better suited to your business’ needs. Why, you ask? Read on and find out.

For a technology that’s so commonplace, Wi-Fi rarely receives an update unless a catastrophic new threat becomes a major issue. Most recently, the KRACK vulnerability exposed serious shortcomings regarding WPA2 connections--a technology that has been in place since 2004. A new version of this technology called WPA3 has been introduced to combat the most recent threats and vulnerabilities, improving security considerably.

Certain threats out there are dangerous enough to cause major entities to warn against them. In particular, a recent malware by the name of VPNFilter has been deemed dangerous and prevalent enough that the FBI has addressed it. Since the malware targets routers (probably not your first guess in terms of possible vulnerabilities), it has considerable potential to become a nuisance for your organization.

Hackers and cybercriminals, like most people, tend to gravitate towards high-reward activities. In this case, that means that focus is turning to creating malware that attacks the router, potentially infecting the users that leverage it to connect wirelessly to the Internet. Researchers at Kaspersky Lab recently discovered an example of such a malware, so today, we will review this threat and how to best protect your network.

When diagnosing your computer's security problems, it should be noted that malware is not always located on the PC itself. A lot of the time, problems could be occurring in a number of different operating systems and browsers, making it difficult to diagnose the cause. A recent study by Ronald Kaplan and Dylan Kaplan proved that malware can be located not only on your computer and devices, but even on your wireless router.

You may have noticed last week that the Internet was having some trouble with its operating speeds, but now we know for sure why. The root of the problem lies in Tier 1's Internet routers' Border Gateway Protocol routing tables, which have exceeded their maximum size, and has brought about the failure of these routers to operate at maximum speed.