The FBI May Have Just Reset Your Router Remotely – How to Tell

(KMDL-FM) The Federal Bureau of Investigation may have secretly been in your business. The agency acting on the authority of a court order has been "remotely entering" your computer network and resetting your home's router. If you ask the FBI, they will tell you it's for your own good. But is it?

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To put it in layman's terms, in a country that values personal freedoms, what the FBI did was normally something we could not condone. However, the reason they did what they did to your router is to possibly prevent something even more nefarious from happening to your home network and all of the people that come in contact with it.

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Why are the FBI and the NSA Investigating Personal Computer Networks?

The FBI and NSA have been working together on systematically resetting thousands of older routers, in particular those that may have been compromised by Russian operatives. It's believed Russian hacker groups have been compromising home routers for more than two years.

The hacker groups use the compromised router to intercept credentials, authorization tokens, sensitive communications, and, of course, financial records as well. And because the majority of the routers affected are older, that means they lack the most up-to-date security patches and software.

FBI Publishes List of Home Network Routers That Should Be Replaced Immediately

The FBI is asking that if you have any of the following TP-Link model Routers in your network, please replace them. The reason for the replacement is that these routers are no longer receiving security updates and patches, and despite the FBI-ordered remote reset, they still need to be replaced.

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Here are the model numbers of routers that should be replaced according to the FBI:

TP-Link TL-WR841N
TP-Link LTE Wireless N Router MR6400
TP-Link Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router Archer C5
TP-Link Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router Archer C7
TP-Link Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router WDR3600
TP-Link Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router WDR4300

TP-Link Wireless Dual Band Router WDR3500
TP-Link Wireless Lite N Router WR740N
TP-Link Wireless Lite N Router WR740N/WR741ND
TP-Link Wireless Lite N Router WR749N
TP-Link Wireless N 3G/4G Router MR3420
TP-Link Wireless N Access Point WA801ND
TP-Link Wireless N Access Point WA901ND
TP-Link Wireless N Gigabit Router WR1043ND
TP-Link Wireless N Gigabit Router WR1045ND
TP-Link Wireless N Router WR840N
TP-Link Wireless N Router WR841HP
TP-Link Wireless N Router WR841N
TP-Link Wireless N Router WR841N/WR841ND
TP-Link Wireless N Router WR842N
TP-Link Wireless N Router WR842ND
TP-Link Wireless N Router WR845N
TP-Link Wireless N Router WR941ND
TP-Link Wireless N Router WR945N

You should be able to look at your router and determine if it is one of the listed units that the FBI has targeted for resetting and replacement.

Since these units have been "sunset" as far as updates and security patches go, there is no financial recourse for you. And when you set up that new router, don't use one of these passwords.