Asus responds to mass router outage that customers experienced

[harlan4096]

Asus customers from around the world started to report that their Asus routers were having a issue on Wednesday. For most users, their routers appeared to be freezing every few minutes or so, making them unbearable to use.

Some users provided details on the issue, claiming that the routers memory was maxing out quickly whenever the device was running, and that this was causing the freezing issues.

It took Asus two days to release an official response. The Taiwan-based manufacturer of PC hardware and other devices published a news post on its website.

There, Asus states that its technical team discovered a configuration issue in its server settings file. This error could then lead to network connectivity issues in the company's routers.

Asus writes: "During routine security maintenance, our technical team discovered an error in the configuration of our server settings file, which could potentially cause an interruption in network connectivity on part of the routers."

The company highlights that it has addressed the issue. Customers affected by the issue may resolve the issue in the following way:

1. Reboot the Asus router.
   
2. If rebooting does not fix the issue, Asus recommends saving the settings file and performing a hard reset of the router. Once the device has been reset, customers may upload the settings file to the router to restore their settings.
   
3. If the interface of the device can't be accessed, Asus suggests to press the Reset button of the device until the "power LED indicator on the router starts to blink".
   

Asus' post lacks details. The company does not explain how a server configuration error can affect customer routers. While routers may be configured to download and install updates automatically, some customers, who disabled automatic updates on their devices, were also affected by the issue.

Some customers suspect that Asus may still push updates to their routers, even if automatic updates are disabled. One user suggested that Asus pushed a corrupt definition file to its routers to ASD, the security daemon that handles security on the route, ignoring the device's automatic update settings.

The corrupt file caused routers to run out memory, which caused the crashing or freezing issues.

Most Asus routers should have returned to normal operations by now. Devices still affected by the issue should be rebooted, which should resolve the issue in most cases.

Now You: which routers/ modems do you use?
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