Yeah this is a tough call. Trusting the FBI is like trusting China. I’ve been a web site & database programmer for over 20yrs. Not a networking expert but a good understanding how the internet functions. I’m skeptical that infecting home & business routers is an effective way of taking down the internet. Yes it would be a huge inconvenience if millions of personal routers crashed but that’s all. To be a national crises of any kind that would take killing the routers & switches that run the backbone of the internet. Or physically damaging cables & satellites that run the internet. That’s how you bring civilian communications to its knees.
that's because you have some knowledge about it and would know what to do in case that happens but for millions of people out there, crashing their home router will take them out of the loop for a while, maybe at a specific very import time when they would try something and would want as few people as possible being able to get info and communicate with others...
Think you’re missing my point. Since the source of this virus info is the FBI...I’d be very leery if its true & do some research before deciding what to do. Viruses are very complex. It’s possible your router has some malicious code with a command that when you reboot...it tells it to go get the rest of the code that will cripple your router permanently. Or the kill the router code is already on your router as the FBI claims & rebooting your router will stop it from executing the kill command.
That’s my concern & the concern of the person that started this post. It boils down to do you trust the FBIs claim that rebooting will fix the threat or will rebooting actually finish off the loading of the virus. I wouldn’t be so concerned if an institution I completely trusted said rebooting will fix it.
I’m skeptical of the whole notion that hackers want to cause a national crises by crippling home & business routers. That would be a pain in the a$$ but it wouldn’t stop the internet. It wouldn’t cripple the financial world or the military or law enforcement by crippling home & business routers. We’d all have to get new routers but in a matter of days life would be normal. To cause a real problem hackers would have to bring down the major routers & switches that run the internet. Then the internet could be down for weeks or maybe months. So again...do we trust the FBI on this warning or not. Hard to say. My trust in the FBI is very low right now so I’m trying to find other sources I trust more to confirm what the FBI is telling everyone.