It took 48 hours, but the mystery of the mass Asus router outage is solved

[Dan Goodin]

On Wednesday, Asus router users around the world took to the Internet to report that their devices suddenly froze up for no apparent reason and then, upon rebooting repeatedly, stopped working every few minutes as device memory became exhausted.

Two days later, the Taiwan-based hardware maker has finally answered the calls for help. The mass outage, the company said, was the result of “an error in the configuration of our server settings file.” After fixing the glitch, most users needed to only reboot their devices. In the event that didn’t fix the problem, the company’s support team advised users to save their current configuration settings and perform a factory reset. The company also apologized.

It was a frustrating two days for many users as they attempted to troubleshoot the outage. Asus’ silence during that time only added to the frustration.

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[drinkingbird]

On Wednesday, Asus router users around the world took to the Internet to report that their devices suddenly froze up for no apparent reason and then, upon rebooting repeatedly, stopped working every few minutes as device memory became exhausted.

Two days later, the Taiwan-based hardware maker has finally answered the calls for help. The mass outage, the company said, was the result of “an error in the configuration of our server settings file.” After fixing the glitch, most users needed to only reboot their devices. In the event that didn’t fix the problem, the company’s support team advised users to save their current configuration settings and perform a factory reset. The company also apologized.

It was a frustrating two days for many users as they attempted to troubleshoot the outage. Asus’ silence during that time only added to the frustration.


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And to be more clear, the asd (Asus Security Daemon) process is a security feature on the Asus router that downloads signatures from Asus periodically (unrelated to Trend Micro). It actually does this in both stock and Merlin, but for some reason merlin wasn't affected. So apparently they released a bad signature file, but didn't release it to merlin yet (from what @RMerlin has said in an old thread, sounds like they release a different signature for his or possibly a different timetable).

For reference

What is "asd" process?

Hi guys, I am wondering what is the "asd" process, which produces the following log in /jffs/asd.log: 1525496708[register_feature] chknvram registered 1525496708[register_feature] misc registered 1525496708[init] Load existing signature files. 1525496708[update_signature_in_feature] Update sig...

www.snbforums.com

 

[scajjr2]

You would think after all the backlash they are getting with their AM5 motherboards burning up 7xxxX3D CPUs and how they've bungled their response, they might have learned something. But I guess not.

sam

 

[aurizn]

This is a massive negligence and a huge security loophole on ASUS end. There shouldn't be a single point of failure and I wish ASUS let us disable this feature completely in the future.

 

[bitsbytes]

wtf !!! was this problem just on the AX89X or were other routers affected ?!!

 

[Raven76]

I have two different xt8's installations but no problems at all with both!

 

[wouterv]

asd (Asus Security Daemon)

Is that similar to ahs in like a RT-AC68U?

May 20 04:13:58 ahs: [read_json]Update ahs JSON file.

 

[drinkingbird]

Is that similar to ahs in like a RT-AC68U?

May 20 04:13:58 ahs: [read_json]Update ahs JSON file.

AHS is auto healing system or asus healing system, not sure how/if it is related. Maybe @RMerlin knows.

 

[drinkingbird]

wtf !!! was this problem just on the AX89X or were other routers affected ?!!

Affected lots and lots of routers, but seemingly a lot less on Merlin. My AC1900 running Merlin was not impacted.

 

[Gregory Phillips]

My ax88u didn't experience an outage, however, I'm not at all happy with how Asus is treating us, the customers, over their snafus. When I upgrade to wifi 7 I will probably look elsewhere for my router.

 

[d5aqoep]

I was getting Network cable unplugged error on my GT-AX11000 Pro which I got just yesterday. Then suddenly the whole device went offline and wasn’t coming back even after power cycling it multiple times. I was about to RMA the f*** out of it. But as last try, I then factory reset it and set it up as new. Finally it started working again.

Salt on my wounds moment was I already had 2nd GT-AX11000 Pro on order for mesh which will be delivered today.

I sincerely hope all fiascos after fiascos cause this sleepy giant to wake up. Also we don’t own our routers anymore. The company Asus can remotely brick our devices and play dumb.

 

[maxbraketorque]

It must have affected a limited number of routers. My GT-AX6000 main/AP pair running ASUS beta 9.0.0.6 were unaffected.

 

[Cheoah]

Took down my 4 unit XT8 mesh which has been rock solid since day 1. Thanks ASUS. I def configured my device for you NOT to do this. Major disruption to work day, clients/employer not understanding of ASUS ineptitude. Nor am I.

Major confidence shake. ASUS comes across as poorly led and lacking sufficient controls to avoid similar issues in future. Essentially they can brick our routers accidentally if they loose some tired ding dong on their system. ASUS looks like fools here. Still little old ladies that cannot connect and will have to pay someone to come and sort their hosed wifi.

 

[Clark Griswald]

RMerlin FW, keeping my Router/AP running well without any anomalies (outages)!
I rarely look at the router logs, yet scrolled through to verify no issues.

 

[L&LD]

You would think after all the backlash they are getting with their AM5 motherboards burning up 7xxxX3D CPUs and how they've bungled their response, they might have learned something. But I guess not.

sam

Sure, they're aggressive with their motherboard settings. But I believe the blame is firmly on AMD for this issue (chips burning up). With no safeguards on their chips and no guidelines to manufacturers, this isn't the first or last time this will happen.

 

[dlandiss]

As a data point only, we have several dozen ASUS routers at 30+ locations around St. Louis (plus 3 at home) and have no reports of failures. Of course, I habitually install Merlin before we place them...

 

[RMerlin]

The issue only affected older versions of the firmware.

 

[TexasFlood]

There were no noticable issues with my RT-AX86U running firmware version 22525.

 

[RMerlin]

There were no noticable issues with my RT-AX86U running firmware version 22525.

388.xxxxx firmwares were not affected.

 

[scajjr2]

sam