macOS Sonoma 14.3 (23D56) breaks access to WLAN router settings

Hi there,

I don’t know whether anyone else has experienced the same, but since the last macOS Sonoma update (see in title), I cannot access the settings of my WLAN router anymore.

To give some background information, the WLAN router is provided by my ISP in Germany, O2 (Telefonica), and it has always been possible to access the settings interface of the router by entering “o2.box” or the IP address “192.168.1.1” in a web browser’s address line. Now, when I enter one of these, I will be sent to a website named o2.box which was registered on 2024-01-27 by some service called NameSilo LLC. All this is highly dubious.

Let me emphasize that this problem does not occur with Macs running older systems, but it also occurs with iPhones and iPads on which the latest security update was installed. I suspect that the new security update somehow circumnavigates the router’s internal DNS resolving which should occur before DNS queries are sent to and processed by external domain name servers. The input “o2.box” isn’t resolved into the internal settings pages of the router anymore, but to the external domain that happened to be registered just a few days before.

To be honest, I don’t know how to deal with this. Whether it is an problem caused by Apple or a problem of my ISP. I would be grateful to hear some advice by an individual who is more knowledgeable in networking and internet technology than I am. Thank you in advance. :)

Alex