Mystery malware destroys 600,000 routers from a single ISP during 72-hour span:
An unknown threat actor with equally unknown motives forces ISP to replace routers.
One day last October, subscribers to an ISP known as Windstream began flooding message boards with reports their routers had suddenly stopped working and remained unresponsive to reboots and all other attempts to revive them.
Whenever I have an internet problem I always dread contracting my ISP because I have to explain what I’ve done to the repair tech and I can tell I’m annoying them.
Like my fiber box is getting no signal, so I reach out and they’re like “we’re going to reset your router”. Except they can’t, because I don’t use their router I use my own router and trick their system into accepting it because I’ve tagged the port with the cable from the fiber box with the right VLAN. So then after I explain that part they’re like “ok well can you hook up our router for testing?”
I can but I also have an old fluke fiber tester that I’ve already tested the line with so like…..I know it’s not that. But then I have to explain “well I actually already tested the actual fiber and there is no signal so the problem isn’t with the router. Here’s the output of the test.”
I feel like it must be like an ISP techs worst nightmare to get a fluke test output in a service ticket.