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Linksys WiFi Gateway Remote Attack Risk Discovered

Posted by simoniker on from the over-the-ether dept.

Glenn Fleishman writes "According to InternetNews.com, a tech consultant discovered that even if you turn the remote administration feature off on a Linksys WRT54G -- the single bestselling Wi-Fi device in the world -- you can still remotely access it through ports 80 and 443. Linksys sets the HTTP username to nothing and password to 'admin' on all of its devices by default. Web site scanning from anywhere in the world to devices that have routable Internet-facing addresses would allow script kiddie remote access, at which point you could flash the unit with new firmware, extract the WEP or WPA key, or just mess up someone's configuration and change the password."

8 of 311 comments (clear)

  1. Ummmmm....... by Dr+Reducto · · Score: 4, Funny

    I am grabbing my laptop right now and going to my newfound open access point!

  2. psst ... by nick-less · · Score: 5, Funny

    don't tell to my neighbour...

  3. All your gateways are belong to us by tedgyz · · Score: 4, Funny

    All your gateways are belong to us

    --
    "No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
  4. Well... by Rican · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...anyone dumb enough to leave the router with the default password deserves to be h4x0red. I assume that by now pretty much anyone that owns a computer knows the need to create their own password not only for their PC but other devices/peripherals.

    Although, I tried changing mine to "penis" and it returned a message saying: "Password is too small."

    Go figure...

    --
    Rican

    Want a free iPod?

  5. Simple, simple solution by incog8723 · · Score: 2, Funny

    It has been my experience that if you use a combination of wireless and wired technology (ie, a carrier pigeon tied to a really long string so you can pull it back really fast--the cats really love to chase the carcass, but you'll get your data back without incident).

  6. Go "disruptive technology" ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    I'm sure this isn't what Cringly meant but this should provide plenty of disruption for people all round.

  7. Re:What if some script kiddie meshed them all? by AKnightCowboy · · Score: 2, Funny
    Imagine what you could do with a Beowulf cluster of these...

    Wow, you could cluster 100 of these together and get the computing power of a Pentium III. Imagine what you could do with that kind of hardware.

  8. Re:psst ... OFFTOPIC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    WLAN1 WLAN 2
    | /
    .-------.
    WLAN3 -| | - WLAN 4
    | |
    `-------' -.
    / | \
    WLAN 5 WLAN 6 WLAN 7

    Check your reality.
    The signals you are picking up might not be WLAN.
    You might actually be living inside an experimental shoebox that's
    being monitored by seven teams of scientists.