The NSA is warning Americans about an internet security breach that occurred back in December of 2025 that could happen again if we’re not careful. This is not a security breach that only involves Government or Corporate Internet systems but also your personal Internet access.
It’s all about your router.
If your home has Internet access, it’s almost certain that it has a router. A little black box that’s on a shelf or in a cupboard or maybe a closet with little blinking lights on it the controls your access to the Internet.
I live out on the sticks, so my Internet access is coming from Starlink and yes, I have a Starlink router.
What happened?
According to MSN.com,
‘In a coordinated advisory, the National Security Agency and FBI, working with the Department of Justice, warned that Russian state hackers had compromised thousands of ordinary consumer routers, using them as quiet footholds to intercept internet traffic and steal login credentials.’
The hacking is attributed to a Russian military group known as Unit 26165 that specializes in cybersecurity and is part of a Russian Military Intelligence Unit.
At its peak here in the United States, the NSA identified over 5000 individual consumers that were affected and 200 different companies or organizations. What did the hackers do? “The hackers rerouting internet traffic through fraudulent login pages built to harvest passwords for services such as Microsoft Outlook.”
And the effort wasn’t just limited to the United States; it was worldwide impacting over 100 different countries and 10s of thousands of consumer routers. All funneling data to Russian controlled servers.
What do you need to do?
There are three things that you can do to protect yourself from this kind of hacking.
- disable any kind of remote access to your router.
If you don’t know how to do it, get help, or if nobody knows how to do it, it’s time to replace that hardware. - Change its passwords on a regular basis.
When routers are installed, they have default passwords. Don’t leave that default password in place, Change it right away. - If it’s an older style router, replace it.
If the router you own no longer has support from the manufacturer, it’s time to replace it.
None of these precautions are sexy, but they will protect you and the US From hackers, whether they are foreign or domestic. The sad reality is that the biggest national IT exposure, is cheap consumer electronics, not state-of-the-art server farms.
According to msn.com,”
‘A government warning aimed at home routers is an acknowledgment that national-security exposure now runs through consumer electronics. The defense on offer is not sophisticated, but it depends on households actually taking the unglamorous steps that unpatched, set-and-forget devices have long invited attackers to exploit.’
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