The FBI has disrupted a network of half a million routers compromised by the group of Russian hackers believed to have penetrated the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign during the 2016 elections, according to reports.
The hacker group, known as "Fancy Bear," has been using a malware program called "VPN Filter" to compromise home and small office routers made by Linksys, MikroTik, Netgear and TP-Link, as well as QNAP network-attached storage devices.
VPN Filter is "particularly concerning" because components of the malware can be used for the theft of website credentials and to target industrial system protocols, such as those used in manufacturing and utility settings, Cisco Talos Threat Researcher William Largent explained in a Wednesday post.
"The malware has a destructive capability that can render an infected device unusable," he said, "which can be triggered on individual victim machines or en masse, and has the potential of cutting off Internet access for hundreds of thousands of victims worldwide."