Since mid-May various ASUS router models with the feature AiProtection enabled have suddenly gone offline. Here’s what happened and what problem occurred.
These days many owners of router ASUS reported sudden device disconnections. The issue has been the subject of numerous discussions on online platforms since mid-May.
Users who have run into the problem have found that their devices ASUS were located offline and initially they pointed the finger at the chosen telecommunications operator. After some checks, it was possible to ascertain that the disconnectionapparently inexplicable, was due to the ASUS router.
The Taiwanese hardware manufacturer has confirmed that the problem arose following a mistake unintentionally introduced in a distributed configuration file lato server: “our technical team has detected an error in the configuration of the server-side settings file which could potentially cause a loss of network connectivity on part of the routers“, reads the bulletin published by ASUS. “We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this incident may have caused and are committed to preventing such an issue from happening again in the future.“.
ASUS has not clarified in detail what was the cause of the sudden disconnections of routers worldwide. With some simple investigations, however, several researchers have been able to ascertain that i ASUS routers have gone offline these days due to a “broken update” of the feature AiProtection.
AiProtection is an advanced security feature found in ASUS routers and was co-developed with Trend Micro. As the name suggests, AiProtection use theartificial intelligence to protect the local network from cyber attacks, malware and online threats.
AiProtection takes care of identifying and block cyber attacks working at the network level, it provides a mechanism for parental controlOf traffic analysis in order to identify and neutralize any suspicious or anomalous activity. It also provides dedicated protection for i IoT devices (Internet of Things) to prevent them from being compromised and used as entry points for local network attacks.
The defense system developed by ASUS and Trend Micro, integrated in the router, receives regularly automatic updates to keep the system able to detect and block the latest malware and new attack techniques. AiProtectionit should be noted, is not enabled for default and can possibly be enabled by each user by acting on the homonymous section of the router’s administration panel.
Why ASUS routers went offline
It happened these days that a corrupted update Of AiProtection was mistakenly distributed to users of ASUS routers. The problem at the configuration file level has resulted in some routers with the feature AiProtection enabled to go suddenly and seemingly inexplicably offline.
ASUS has advised users to restart the router or perform a hard reset restoring the factory settings. It must be said that in this way, however, all the personalized configurations are lost (before proceeding, it is therefore important to make a complete backup of the section Administration, Restore/Save/Load Settings).
The company also confirmed that it had fixed the server-side problem by preventing the further occurrence of the same anomalous behavior.
Several researchers had already noticed that by logging in via Telnet to the router (e.g. with a client like PuTTY), moving to the folder /jffs/asd (command cd /jffs/asd) then deleting a file related to the operation of AiProtection (rm chknvram20230516 -r 6) and restarting the ASUS router fixes the issue.
Alternatively, as reported by many, to bypass the problem and bring the router back online without losing the configuration, it was enough to download and to install the last one firmware version acting on the section Administration, Firmware update of the admin panel.
Although the function AiProtection offers an excellent level of protection, many users prefer to keep it deactivated as well as to keep the automatic installation of new firmware versions disabled (option Automatic firmware update to OFF). Why? Just to avoid problems like the one that has arisen these days.
A favored approach by many, often rightly so, is to proceed with theinstalling updates so manual: in this way it is possible to protect oneself from any mistakes made by the manufacturer’s technicians and proceed with the loading of the new versions after a few days, after verifying that the update are free from any problems.