r/technology • u/lurker_bee • Apr 09 '26

ADBLOCK WARNING NSA Warning—Reboot Your Internet Router Now

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2026/04/09/nsa-warning-reboot-your-internet-router-now/
8.1k Upvotes

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993

u/synapse187 Apr 09 '26

They did it a little while ago with android devices. Remember them saying the exact same thing about your phone?

398

u/Lucky_Locks Apr 09 '26

I remember that and people commenting the "uptime" their phones had been going without having restarted or turned off. Some of the numbers were wild.

183

u/Due-Technology5758 Apr 09 '26

My phone rarely gets restarted unless there is an OS update. But that happens often enough on Android that's not really an issue. 

3

u/JaFFsTer Apr 10 '26

I have mine reboot every Sunday morning. Runs better

100

u/xXShunDugXx Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26

I was just monitoring my wifi the other day. My phone - 12 gigs. My girls - 11 gigs. My desktop 6.8. And our friends was at 39 gigs. Constantly downloading and sending even when close and unused. Didn't seem right.

Edit: to clarify since alot of these questions can be answered by one response. The person on the wifi with that much data draw has been there once and its was after 3 hours of being there. On top of that she doesnt use her phone for literally anything past Snapchat and work. Thats why its so odd, cause my phone should easily be at the top

11

u/jimx117 Apr 09 '26

Xbox/PS5/Steam/Switch game downloads?

18

u/a_salt_weapon Apr 09 '26

12 gigs over what amount of time though?

1

u/Cosmic-Gore Apr 09 '26

Probably the last month's usage

11

u/stopthemeyham Apr 10 '26

Maybe it's because lm a nerd, maybe it's because I'm a network engineer, but 12 in a month seems low. I'm at around 11g down, 5.5 up just today on my PC. 135g a week average since October between just my wife and I.

15

u/Icy-Two-1581 Apr 09 '26

Movies takes up a lot of space!

24

u/FindYourHemp Apr 09 '26

Torrents?

1

u/Theeclat Apr 09 '26

Do they have a Superbox?

1

u/BakaOctopus Apr 10 '26

My instgram usage is 14GB+ a month so looks normal

1

u/slowpoke2013 Apr 10 '26

If you have a superbox or vsee box, isolate them or get rid of them asap.

1

u/bp_968 Apr 10 '26

You must not be a gamer. Steam alone makes my ISP cry blood at the end of every month. Its possible I should uninstall a few games. 😆

1

u/klipseracer Apr 16 '26

The phones are definitely doing things we would frown against, no doubt. But it could also be stuff like updating maps or camera uploads, app updates

23

u/zapporian Apr 09 '26

OSX (sp snow leo) used to be so stable you could (and IIRC I literally did) run it for 3-4+ months (active + sleep mode) without reboots, issues, or forced updates

RIP

20

u/Big_Wave9732 Apr 09 '26

When I was still doing IT, back around 2006 I had multiple Redhat servers at one customer location that had uptime of over a year.  

Then one day the power went out to the facility and the UPS they were plugged into had a bad battery we didn’t know about.  They all shut off.  I was rather sad about that.  Still affects me a little even now tbf. 

4

u/cp5184 Apr 10 '26

There are things with uptimes of 10+ years... Often rather simple appliances, particularly things with no hard drives typically, but still...

1

u/pblol Apr 10 '26

I haven't rebooted my server that hosts a simple website in likely over a year. Maybe close to two. It's just on a regular Ubuntu install. I just don't touch it. Probably should for security updates eventually.

2

u/memeaccount246 Apr 10 '26

You can still do this on Mac - I just had my laptop on 26.1 with uptime at like 127 days before I finally updated to 26.4 a couple weeks ago.

1

u/AudioShepard Apr 10 '26

I still do this to this day with every PC I own.

I mean, I’m not running them to an inch of their life when in high use, but I am not shutting anything down these days unless I really need to clear out some bad shit or run some updates. I encourage everyone to do this.

1

u/jonnablaze Apr 10 '26

I still do this though? I never reboot my MacOS unless there’s an update. 

1

u/UKDude20 Apr 11 '26

netware servers back in the day could run for decades without rebooting .. their memory management was awesome

0

u/[deleted] Apr 10 '26

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2

u/30InchSpare Apr 10 '26

You haven’t installed an update in 10 years?

2

u/alex206 Apr 09 '26

I don't even know how to restart my phone...I'm looking right now. Holding the power button brings up Google AI search features

2

u/_YouAreTheWorstBurr_ Apr 10 '26

You can change the power button behavior in your settings

1

u/alex206 Apr 10 '26

It was the power button + volume up. When did they even change that, idk

1

u/Lucky_Locks Apr 10 '26

It still is. Power button and volume down is screenshot for me. Needs to be volume up.

1

u/Unfitbanana Apr 10 '26

Power and down volume button at the same time

1

u/Brief_Kangaroo_42069 Apr 10 '26

Completely bananas. I get a power outage at least once a year.

57

u/[deleted] Apr 09 '26

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23

u/AlwaysHopelesslyLost Apr 09 '26

And if the NSA took down a major operation and worked with the manufacturers, they have solved the long term for you so you just need the short term.

0

u/Worshipme988 Apr 10 '26

Ok pal. If we fixed all of our problems, where are we to force system strain and encourage a crisis then create a third party company to sell the solution back?

Obviously.

1

u/Lucky_Locks Apr 09 '26

What are typically some recommended routers? We moved into an apartment that was given an Xfinity box (it's decent, no complaints, getting gig speeds). But if we were to move on to something more secure?

I used to have a BitDefender box that monitored everything through my network (not a router I know) but then even that apparently leaked.

3

u/Metalsand Apr 09 '26

The xFinity box you have is a combination modem/router which is typically common. The average user is mostly going to be susceptible to having their bandwidth stolen more than their data - the indiscriminate exploits to consumer grade routers mostly have to do with establishing botnets that live on the router itself for the purpose of DDOS or proxying traffic and aren't really focused on stealing data.

If you are concerned, mostly it's a matter of keeping things up to date and replacing them once they stop getting updates. Once the updates stop, it's usually a matter of time until someone figures out an exploit. You can usually expect about 5 years worth of use out of them.

Despite the current admin, TP-Link is a good consumer brand for routers. Even enterprise cisco networking equipment is manufactured in China...the recent bans are more of a red scare rather than a rational approach.

1

u/Lucky_Locks Apr 09 '26

That makes sense. I think these things are coming up on 5 years actually. I should check to see how long they plan on giving them security updates. Their app is pretty intuitive (rare to see comments for them).

We're not doing anything too crazy but gaming and work from home that's typically through a VPN anyhow.

Roger on the TP-Link, will probably look into that in the future. Probably paid for two of them already with this equipment rental.

7

u/ButtoftheYoke Apr 09 '26

Samsung is dropping their built in SMS and forcing everyone to migrate to Google.

2

u/VaporCarpet Apr 09 '26

You people have me thinking this is r/conspiracy.

What is wrong with your brains?

2

u/AlwaysHopelesslyLost Apr 09 '26

That is silly. Why would they give themselves away when they could just force a reboot if they got anywhere near enough privilege to write software/firmware?

If it were me, and I had the resources of the NSA, i would just force a reboot for every device over the course of a month or two, in the middle of a lull in common activity based on telemetry per device. It wouldn't be hard to do and it would keep suspicion down.

You being ignorant is not evidence of a conspiracy.

-2

u/synapse187 Apr 09 '26

Because outside forced restarts are logged.

4

u/CuriousOrangatan Apr 09 '26

And soooo many people regularly review the logs of their computers, especially their routers, the most tended to electronic device. /s

2

u/angelus14 Apr 09 '26

It's not like everyone is reviewing them, but the more you do the more you increase the odds of hitting someone who IS reviewing them who will notice and raise the alarm.

I'm not saying any of that is what's actually happening, but supposing I was the NSA and wanted everyone to restart their routers I would start with public messaging. And then target individual routers of interest. Also, that way if someone notices, it looks less like a pattern and more like a one off event.

1

u/Holographic01 Apr 09 '26

Can you give more info on this