An alarming and unheard of cyber attack To be noticed a Cavitation Security company. According to his analysis, at the end of October last year, an unknown attacker permanently destroyed the routers of at least 600,000 Internet users within 72 hours, automatically connecting to them remotely and disabling the software running on them.
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It is not known why the cyber attack occurred
Self-destructing attacks are nothing new. In the heyday of home computing, almost all viruses were created for this reason, and their programmers would play with others for their own pleasure. What made the current router-killing cyberattack special is that it specifically targeted routers provided to its customers by US ISP Windstream, and also destroyed models manufactured by ActionTec and Sagemcom in the same manner.
Windstream has 1.6 million subscribers across eighteen states in the USA, meaning that nearly a third of its customers had to replace their routers in a short period of time.
Based on Lomen's analysis, the attacker was very good at what he was doing, and he also tried to cover his tracks with several tactics so that his identity would not be revealed. The goal of the cyberattack was apparently to disrupt Windstream's Internet service and cut off Internet access for its customers.
At the time of writing, Windstream has declined to respond to inquiries about the cyberattack, and appears to be trying to sweep it under the rug.
Although the serious cybersecurity incident occurred in October last year, until the Lumen report was published, everyone assumed that the service provider itself had issued faulty updates to its routers, accidentally killing its network devices.
Finally, it's worth noting that a large portion of Windstream's customer base lives in rural addresses, where providers don't scramble due to a lack of infrastructure, and often only one company provides cable Internet service. In light of this, there seems to be a lingering suspicion that one of Windstream's competitors using particularly dirty tactics may be behind the event.
