"Self Sustaining" Botnets Thriving In Poorly Secured Routers

[engine]

This is a fascinating article, and shows that we can never be complacent for our friends and family that don't know as much as we do about security.

Large numbers of home and small-office routers are under the control of hackers who are using them to overwhelm websites with more junk traffic than they can handle, security researchers said Tuesday. The devices are so poorly secured that they have given rise to self-perpetuating botnets commandeered by multiple attackers. "Self Sustaining" Botnets Thriving In Poorly Secured Routers [arstechnica.com]

Compromised routers are by no means new. They've been observed for years and have been observed affecting as many as 300,000 devices at a time. Multiple manufacturers have been known to be vulnerable, including Linksys, Asus, D-Link, Micronet, Tenda, and TP-Link.

[keyplyr]

My router has an online config page where I periodically change the password and reset the wifi channel to detour eavesdroppers and other more malevolent intruders. Very simple to do, but most users probably just set it up and forget about it... or the cable guy does it and the home user doesn't have a clue :)