Solved RT-AX86U - Stuck on old firmware (solved!), WiFi not working (solved!)

[ColinTaylor]

@CrashXRu When first reporting the problem to Asus customer support I don't think it's a good idea to include all the pa data (that's if there is any!). That is not particularly helpful to them at that stage and might create confusion. I think it would be better to stick with just the following information which demonstrates the mismatch between the hardware and what's printed on the case label.

nvram show | grep -E 'macaddr|^odmpid|^secret|^serial'

If they need more information later they can always ask for it.

 

[Tech9]

Over the last week I have restored more than 4 routers with such problems

Same here. On Monday alone five different people contacted me with this problem.

Did you guys managed to spot what may be eventually causing this condition?

 

[CrashXRu]

We are sure that the reason is one of the proprietary applications in ASUS routers
there are several of them used

There is a large integration of applications
AiCloud+AiDisk+DDNS ASUS

and there are smaller ones
AiProtection


I interviewed owners of damaged devices for a long time, all of them had a public IP address with configured access services to the router, through the application, and some also used access to files on the connected disk to the router

 

[Tech9]

Any suspected relation between recently found AiCloud related malware and this issue?

RT-AX88U maxing out a core and regularly showing 60+ MB/s upload

I had Diversion and Skynet running but have since disabled them, suspecting that may be the culprit. Essentially, I can't see any device connected to my network that is sending large amounts of data, but when I look at the traffic monitor (Analyzer) it shows this: I only have ~30Mbps of...

www.snbforums.com

 

[CrashXRu]

Any suspected relation between recently found AiCloud related malware and this issue?

RT-AX88U maxing out a core and regularly showing 60+ MB/s upload

I had Diversion and Skynet running but have since disabled them, suspecting that may be the culprit. Essentially, I can't see any device connected to my network that is sending large amounts of data, but when I look at the traffic monitor (Analyzer) it shows this: I only have ~30Mbps of...

www.snbforums.com

it's the same thing, the first symptoms of the problem are
*high CPU load
*incoming or outgoing traffic
*the appearance of foreign processes, for example Sofia
* last stage loss of factory configuration

firmware version is not important, what firmware is not important
the problem was also noticed in Asia, on the Koolshare project

 

[shinasoba]

Have we got a guided fix for introvert like myself who do wish to bother others for help? Or at this stage I do need to seek assistance from the experts who have been helping many other vicitms out there

 

[CrashXRu]

as far as I know the forum rules
you can't post any information about ASUS that concerns factory settings, how to work with them, etc.

there is also no information in the public domain on the Internet.

I can say with certainty that many people know how to do this, but as you can see there are no instructions, and there are reasons for that

I was once closely involved in testing ASUS equipment and was bound by a contract.

All I found was just my research.

 

[CrashXRu]

also, restoring and changing settings is a fundamentally different procedure

full recovery uses
formatting partitions, creating labels, restoring the configuration itself, entering the corresponding values from the label on router into it, as well as installing calibration data for frequency distribution. This is important, because if the routers operate at close sub-frequencies, this will cause unnecessary interference.

I have a fairly large database of settings dumps in order to exclude this factor



but first you should contact ASUS technical support to register the problem

 

[cristianmza]

We are sure that the reason is one of the proprietary applications in ASUS routers
there are several of them used

There is a large integration of applications
AiCloud+AiDisk+DDNS ASUS

and there are smaller ones
AiProtection


I interviewed owners of damaged devices for a long time, all of them had a public IP address with configured access services to the router, through the application, and some also used access to files on the connected disk to the router

I just want to thank CrashXRu for bringing my router back. I've been having this issue since Friday night and now everything is working well. Cheers

 

[sutc95]

I also factory reset the RT-AX86U router once I found out the admin password no longer works. As I was afraid the router was being hacked, I factory reset the router and then wifi stop working. Just the wifi lights are always off and the error " The country code is not exist. Please enter Country code" prompts out. Tried to load the configuration file, old firmware, firmware restoration, etc, nothing works. Contacted ASUS technical support, they cannot figure out what went wrong and asked me to send it to them for repair. However, I just went out of warranty and the repair is probably going to cost at least 1/2 of the price of a new router. I am really frustrated and hope ASUS can come up with a fix. Or if any expert here can guide me through a work around solution, it will be greatly appreciated.

 

[CrashXRu]

I also factory reset the RT-AX86U router once I found out the admin password no longer works. As I was afraid the router was being hacked, I factory reset the router and then wifi stop working. Just the wifi lights are always off and the error " The country code is not exist. Please enter Country code" prompts out. Tried to load the configuration file, old firmware, firmware restoration, etc, nothing works. Contacted ASUS technical support, they cannot figure out what went wrong and asked me to send it to them for repair. However, I just went out of warranty and the repair is probably going to cost at least 1/2 of the price of a new router. I am really frustrated and hope ASUS can come up with a fix. Or if any expert here can guide me through a work around solution, it will be greatly appreciated.

as far as I understand, you should be notified of the cost of repairs, if the cost is high, refuse the repair and take the device

if it is in the same condition, starts up but the wifi does not work, write to telegram, I will help



I have already created several tickets, with a full description of the problem, and also referred to my report in 2022, about an error in the logic of working with the factory configuration.

I hope this will help fix both problems : hacking and data processing error

 

[beachbouy]

I support @ColinTaylor, in that you need to contact tech support,

understand that there is no automation of the process yet, because some data needs to be entered manually

who wants to restore the original calibration of the radio module
if you have saved the router settings before the breakdown, this will help a lot



When you write to me in Telegram, please remember that I am from Siberia in Russia, my time zone is +7 GMT and I can answer with a delay

I will try to help everyone who wants to)


I think they should know that the MAC address and other data are incorrect

My AX-56U died last night too. Same issue. I noticed problems when I got home from overseas - I have OpenVPN set up and it worked fine while overseas through August and September. When I got home I updated to RT-AX56U_3004_388.8_2 and then I couldn't access SSH anymore even though the settings in Admin tab remained the same.
After trying to troubleshoot that issue for over a week, I decided to do a factory reset last night before bed...
I did save a backup of the settings first.
I got access to SSH back.
Then I lost WiFi and got the country code issue. I tried installing the previous firmware just in case it was an issue with the latest firmware, but that didn't work. I did another factory reset with to see if that would work. After the factory reset I lost access to the Router GUI via Ethernet. I can't get an ip address from the router and Windows isn't happy with the connection.
So I googled and found the threads here.
The warranty for my router expired last month...