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New SOHO Router Security Audit Uncovers Over 60 Flaws In 22 Models
Home and small-office routers have become a hotbed for security research lately, with vulnerabilities and poor security practices becoming the rule, rather than the exception. A new security audit by researchers from Universidad Europea de Madrid only adds to that list, finding 60 distinct flaws in 22 different device models. They posted details of their research on the Full Disclosure mailing list, and the affected brands include D-Link, Belkin, Linksys, Huawei, and others. Many of the models they examined had been distributed to internet customers across Spain by their ISPs. About half of the flaws involve Cross Site Scripting and Cross Site Request Forgery capabilities, though there is at least one backdoor with a hard-coded password. Several routers allow external attackers to delete files on USB storage devices, and others facilitate DDoS attacks.
...right out of the AirPort Extreme manual?
To set up your AirPort Extreme using a Mac, you need the following:
A Mac computer with an AirPort or AirPort Extreme Card installed to set it up wirelessly, or a Mac computer connected to an AirPort Extreme Base Station with an Ethernet cable to set it up using Ethernet
To set up your AirPort Extreme using a Windows PC, you need the following:
A Windows PC with 300 MHz or higher processor speed and a compatible 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, or 802.11n wireless card to set it up wirelessly, or a Windows computer connected to an AirPort Extreme Base Station with an Ethernet cable to set it up using Ethernet
I own several AirPort Extreme/Express devices...range and performance are just as good as other premium consumer-brand routers and access points. I have several Extremes sitting in an 802.1x environment...rock solid reliability and performance. If I had one complaint, it would be that the radio is a bit noisy...in a quiet room, you can often hear a tinny squeal when under load.
Linux "just running iptables" is perfectly secure.
In general you cant just hack firewall software directly. What you do is find a protocol that is allowed through the firewall and then exploit some vulnerability on that protocol. Examples would be default passwords or SQL injection in a web management interface, buffer overflows in a DNS response, weak encryption in a VPN etc.
Well, I trust my ISPs router ... well, not at all, actually.
Because I assume my ISP is either incompetent or dishonest, I don't really care which, I simply don't trust them. And I sure as fuck don't trust them with access to my actual network. I want a layer of security between me and their shit, because I assume their stuff is trivially hacked.
My wife and I each have our offices set up where our own router is getting DHCP from the ISPs router, and then firewalling everything from it. We each have our own locked down wifi, and entirely separate networks. I'm pondering a third router to provide the guest wifi.
Other than disabling the ISPs wifi and using our own, I wouldn't even know the SSID or the password for the ISPs crap. I assume they haven't turned it on without asking, but I never check -- come to think of it, I'd have to find out how.
My parents and my in-laws have routers we've bought them to sit behind the crap the ISP provides. Because I know for a fact that in both cases the ISP provides a router with default wifi SSID and passwords which are published in the docs they give you.
Because it's printed in the "how to" for every damned subscriber, and you can't change it, you can pretty much imagine that if you find an SSID of the right name you can connect to it, and probably have management access to it.
But the problem is so many households trust that the wide open, back doored, well known remote-admin credentialed, shitty routers they've been provided with give them any form of security.
Which means for the overwhelming majority of home users who aren't tech savvy and paranoid, these vulnerabilities are absolutely of practical concern ... because their PCs are directly plugged into the ISPs router, or they're using wifi from the ISPs router.
I'm betting a lot of home users figure they have the router from the ISP, so they don't need anything else.
That these are ISP models doesn't diminish the number of people who could be impacted ... it greatly magnifies it. Because most people who don't know better (and a few who do) connect their PC directly to the ISPs router.
Honestly, go talk to a random neighbor .. see if they have anything between them and their ISPs router. My best is they don't.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.