Router takeovers have been an issue over the past months due to hacker attacks. With this in mind, NetGear has released a firmware that would debug router weaknesses that have been exposed by hackers.
A security company in Switzerland known as Compass revealed that as many as 10,000 counts of home and office routers have been hacked. The investigating team disclosed this issue to NetGear and had in return had shared a test firmware to fix the said issue. A final firmware was rumoured to be released as early as Sept. 3 but never as there a date disclosed by NetGear or Compass when the patch firmware would go public. In connection with this issue, Shellshock Labs also divulged some details relating to router attacks that led Compass to do some intrinsic investigations.
In the past months, bugs affecting the routers have been a security epidemic. Some router manufacturers have given their products too much security features, but in the end were found weak due to default credentials and sloppy encryptions.
The hazards to homes or companies with a hackable router is that the hacker can control the flow of information on the router by altering its domain name servers. They are able to spy on data incoming and outgoing the routers and enables them to snoop around computer files and even the confidential ones.
Pharming is an attack that causes the website data to be redirected to a fake site. These attacks have been a serious matter, especially in Brazil's territory. Kaspersky Lab researchers said that pharming was one of the ploys of the hacking community in stealing bank accounts and personal information. According to Alexandre Herzog of Compass, most of the pharming victims are in the US.
Hackers need an Internet connection as their main source in order to attack a website or a router. A router can be compromised if its setting is in default. With a good security setting, an attacker or a hacker would need to have physical access to the router before they can manipulate incoming and outgoing information, which they do rarely as hackers are located in far places from their attack subjects most of the time.
