A couple of my college buddies posted a link to an Ars Technica article about Linksys routers getting hacked. Sorry I didn’t find it myself, I’m prepping for a job interview. Excuses, excuses, I know.
Researchers have been doing this kind of stuff for at least a year, but now we’re seeing the bad guys do it. It was just a matter of time, because bad guys are going to attack whatever is easiest to attack, and consumer routers are direct-connected to the Internet and their security isn’t really all that much better today than it was when Linksys released its first router in 2000.
What’s worse is that two of the affected models, the Linksys E1000 and E1200, are no longer supported by Linksys. The answer is DD-WRT. Visit the linked page, type in the name of your router, check the version (it’s on a sticker), then load DD-WRT like you would load Linksys firmware. If you’re not comfortable doing it, a computer-savvy friend or acquaintance can do it in half an hour for you. I’m running DD-WRT on two routers myself, and put it on my mother-in-law’s router, and find there’s no comparison between it and anything any of the manufacturers are shipping from the factory.
Is its security perfect? Probably not, but it doesn’t even have the feature this exploit is using. And turning off undesirable features is the beginning of good security.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.