Why rebooting router

Part of the code of the malware can still survive until the router is given a factory reset. That is the only surefire way to completely eliminate the VPNFilter from your router. You can do a factory reset by holding down the reset button on your router for a few seconds.

However, after that you will have to reconfigure all your settings. You may need to call your internet provider to help you do that. Experts say rebooting your router is a simple and safe thing to do when you are facing connectivity woes and cyber threats.

If you are especially concerned about the security of your router, a factory reset is the way to go. You must be logged in to post a comment. How Exactly Do Routers Work? Faster Connection Periodically rebooting your router can give you a few major benefits.

Prevent Hacking Restarting your router, however, gives you even more benefits than getting a faster connection. Author admin. Today, many homes and small offices are using wireless connections. In that case the traffic, like that email coming to your laptop, or your tablet, or your smartphone, gets routed through the wireless access point. Clearly, your router is doing a lot of work — handling traffic that ranges from email to web surfing, printing, streaming music and video, and enabling online gaming.

A router is also how most IoT Internet of Things devices connect to the internet, things like smart thermostats, alarm systems, and security cameras. To do all that work, computing power is required. This malware, which has the ability to collect information flowing through the device but can also render the device inoperable, has been dubbed VPNFilter by the researchers in the Talos threat intelligence group at Cisco their first report on VPNFilter has many of the technical details.

So the FBI issued this recommendation:. As you may know, booting is the technical term for powering on a computing device, thereby activating basic code that is stored on chips in the device. Think of the code in firmware as hard to change in some cases it is practically impossible. The next code that runs in the boot process is that which has been stored in something called non-volatile memory, a type of memory that retains data even when the device is powered down.

That is different from volatile memory, the regular kind of memory that gets wiped clean when you power down your computer or suffer a power outage. Remember, your router is a computer, with firmware and memory, both volatile and non-volatile.

When a router is compromised by VPNFilter malware, chunks of malicious code are loaded into volatile memory. Rebooting or power cycling your router will clear that out, and that is what the FBI would like you to do. For some people the easiest way to reboot the router is to unplug the power supply, wait 30 seconds, then plug it back in again. Resetting your router and thereby restoring it to the factory configuration is very different from rebooting it.

Performing a reset will erase both volatile memory and non-volatile memory. The latter is where your router stores any changes you have made to its configuration. For example, most routers come with a default administrator name and password that you should change to prevent attackers taking it over. How could they do that? Because the default user names and passwords are widely known. They are often printed on the back of the router and may be discoverable via a Google search based on your model number.

While it might be frustrating when they ask, the reason they do is simple, and it can resolve many problems. If you suspect that someone has hacked your router, we recommend a full factory reset of your router — but even this might not fix all of your problems. Rebooting your router is the easiest thing that you can do to try and resolve any issues that you might be having.

However, you will need to reconfigure some settings to get everything working correctly again, and you might even need to contact your internet provider.

Omar attended Clemson University in South Carolina where studied computer information systems and fell in love with the field.