(March 10, 2021)

Supo has noticed an increase in cyber espionage exploiting Finnish infrastructure. The cyber espionage divisions of intelligence services in authoritarian states in particular have exploited dozens of network devices and servers operated by individuals and businesses in Finland by linking them into an infrastructure used for espionage.

This involves routing intelligence service operation traffic through a Finnish network device, so that the attack on the organisation targeted by espionage appears to come from an organisation or a private individual in Finland.

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Supo recommends ensuring that you have taken at least the following steps to improve the security of your router:

– Block external access to the router control panel from the Internet.
– Change the default password so that it is as long as possible and hard to guess. The recommended password length is at least 20 characters.
– Close any open ports on the router that you do not need to use.
– Always update the router firmware to the latest version.