Since yesterday morning, thousands of ASUS routers around the world have started to crash for no apparent reason. Users started to report their problems in different forums and also on Twitter, since this bug affects many models of routers, although the problem is specifically in the firmware used by different routers, but it has a fairly simple solution. Now the manufacturer has released a notice on its official website explaining what has happened, and how to easily fix it.
ASUS routers are permanently connected to the manufacturer’s servers, in order to check for new firmware updates. Periodically, it makes these queries to warn the user about a new version that fixes some kind of bug, or that adds new features to Asuswrt.
What has happened?
Many users of routers from the manufacturer ASUS have begun to flood social networks and different specialized forums indicating that they have problems with their ASUS router. Computers prevent or limit browsing, as the operating system runs out of available space in the computer’s RAM, and with higher-than-normal processor usage. It seems that only certain users are affected and not all of them, for example, those using Asuswrt Merlin firmware are not affected by this problem.
ASUS has released a statement explaining what happened yesterday. During routine security maintenance, the technical development team discovered a configuration error in the server’s configuration file, which has caused network connectivity disruption to thousands of the manufacturer’s routers. ASUS has fixed the issue on the server, and the affected routers can work normally again.
Affected Firmware Versions
Not all Asuswrt firmware versions are affected, below we will explain which ones are affected:
- All firmware versions between 3.0.0.4.382.52443 and 3.0.0.4.386.45119 are affected, in this case, they need a factory reset.
- All firmware versions from 386.45120 to 386.51254 are affected, in this case, they need only a reboot and not a reset.
The following firmware versions are not affected by this bug, so you shouldn’t have any problems:
- 3.0.0.4.380 to 3.0.0.4.382.52442.
- Any version after 386.51255 are not affected.
- Any version 388 is not affected.
As you can see, this bug in the servers has only affected certain Asuswrt firmware versions and not all.
How to solve it
The manufacturer ASUS has indicated what we must do to solve this problem, the steps are as follows:
- Go into the router and save the router configuration file.
- Do a reset of the router and reload the configuration file, now it should work correctly and without problems.
If the router is blocked as soon as it is turned on and we cannot access it via the web, then you will not be able to save the configuration file, and you will have to perform the reset directly from the physical button. You will have to press this button for 10 seconds, and reconfigure all the parameters of the router again.
In different Internet forums they have launched a solution that does not involve resetting the device, but you have to access it via SSH and execute different commands. If you cannot access the router via the web to activate SSH, you will not be able to do so, so the best option is to do a factory reset.
ASUS is expected to release a new firmware update to make sure this doesn’t happen again, so maybe this weekend or Monday we’ll have a new update to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
