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Millions of Home Routers Are Hackable
Julie188 writes "Craig Heffner, a researcher with Maryland-based security consultancy Seismic, plans to release a software tool at the Black Hat conference later this month that he says could be used on about half the existing models of home routers, including most Linksys, Dell, and Verizon FiOS or DSL versions. The tool apparently exploits the routers through DNS rebinding. While this technique has been discussed for 15 years or more, Heffner says, 'It just hasn't been put together like this before.'" Notebooks.com has a list of routers tested and some advice on securing vulnerable routers.
That would actually probably help a lot(though not as much as a real password).
In any exploitation scenario where the router login page isn't simply sitting on the WAN side, happily accepting all comers to try their luck, the hypothetical attacker would probably use a list of default username/password pairs for common router brands, or a list of known exploits for common router models.
Even the most trivial password change would save you entirely from the former, and no password change available would save you from the latter. A password brute-force attack system, written in javascript and injected via the method described, is conceivable; but it would only have until you close the browser window, and it would be subject to any rate-limiting imposed by the router's login page or the browser's JS engine, so it would probably be pretty tepid.
Obviously, if you are going to change your password, change it right; but the difference between default password and bad password is likely a good deal greater than the difference between bad password and good password, when it comes to crackability...
From the article:
"One comfort for users may be that Heffner's method still requires the attacker to compromise the victim's router after gaining access to his or her network."
So, this is a problem if you've left your router with its default admin password, or there's a vulnerability in the firmware which can be exploited. The same as every other possible exploit of consumer^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^hall hardware.
Who published this article? Oh, hey kdawson. Glad to see you're still on form. Seriously, let me filter this shit out of the RSS feed.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Apparently p0rn sites are lower risk than normal sites :P