Small Office and Home Routers Vulnerable To Web Hack

Who is affected with Small Office and Home Routers Web Hacks?
Anyone with a router or firewall is advised to make sure you are using something other than the default password or a simple password.

We have heard of this type of security risk before but until this week we have never seen the problem first hand. We have had 2 cases of routers being hacked and DNS entries being changed in 3 days and I expect that number to grow.

How It Works
What happens is malicious code is used to exploit DNS setting on routers with weak or default passwords. Once these DNS settings are changed, any PC attached to the device that uses those DNS records will be redirected to sites other than the site they were looking for.

What To Do
The best action to take is to prevent the attack by changing your router password to something secure using letters, numbers and special characters. Simply adding a “!” to an existing password makes your security exponentially better. We recommend your password be at least 10 characters long with a combination of letters, numbers and special characters.

If you are already affected you will need to contact your internet provider and see what DNS servers to use and then use those settings on your router. You will also need to change your password or you will risk having the same problem all over again.

If those settings are correct and you are still having problems it may be caused by something else. You can also contact us and we will help you.

We suspect that the attack is coming from a website that was visited but it could also come from spyware already on your PC. It is highly unusual to get such a rare attack on two completely different systems so close together and I expect the problem to grow over the next few weeks. Even if you are not affected, it is still recommended to improve your security by updating your password.

We secure all routers and firewalls we install for both our home and corporate clients but if we did not install your device you could be at risk and as a precaution we will be logging on to our corporate clients firewalls to confirm the security. If you need help or want more information feel free to contact us.