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Total DNS Failures on Belkin Routers Around the World
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Total DNS Failures on Belkin Routers Around the World

emgemg Veteran

Certain models of older Belkin Wireless-N routers depend on a heartbeat ping to heartbeat.belkin.com. If the ping isn't returned, then the router will not provide DNS services to the systems on the LAN behind the router. For much of the day, the routers were unable to reach heartbeat.belkin.com. As a result:

  • Many Belkin router customers have been experiencing a total Internet blackout in their homes and workplaces. Most do not have the technical knowhow to troubleshoot the problem for themselves.

  • ISP helpdesks have been overwhelmed with calls from desperate customers, who blame the ISPs for lost Internet connectivity.

  • Belkin's support people are also overwhelmed.

For Belkin's response, which completely avoids describing what happened, see:

https://belkininternationalinc.statuspage.io

Better description here:

https://isc.sans.edu/diary/Belkin+Router+Apocalypse+heartbeatbelkincom+outage+taking+routers+down/18779

Any web search will reveal lots of sites reporting the issue, although with few details yet.

Thanked by 1Makenai

Comments

  • What kind of idiotic design is this . . . I don't even . . .

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited October 2014

    "Oh I know what we'll do, we'll add a single point of failure and distribute it to homes all around the world, then flip the switch and laugh."

    Anyone remember the time Belkin trolled the world...

  • So if someone wanted to knock a good percentage of computers offline, all they would have to do is DDoS heartbeat.belkin.com... What a smart company Belkin is.

  • A Dlink gaming router I have (cost of it were over $100) also rely on a similar mechanism, if the router can't reach dlink's update server, you aren't getting online with it, you even have hard time getting into the control panel to disable that mechanism.

  • Why would they implement something like this.. to stop people modifying their router firmware or something?

  • Well someones ear is getting bent today.

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