An IT compliance product firm has released a survey of security vulnerabilities in Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) wireless routers. As part of the research, Tripwire sponsored a study of 653 IT and security people and 1,009 employees who work remotely in the US and UK. Collectively, this research strongly shows that critical security vulnerabilities are endemic across the entire SOHO wireless router market, and a surprising number of IT professionals and employees who work remotely do not use basic security controls to protect their wireless routers. SOHO wireless router security vulnerabilities present significant cybersecurity risks to employees and enterprise networks, it is claimed.
Routers are said by the IT firm to be an ideal target for cyberattackers because they can be used to eavesdrop on traffic sent to and from nearby enterprise access points. After an attacker has gained control of a router, they are able to monitor, redirect, block or otherwise tamper with a wide range of online activities. Once a router is compromised, devices guarded by the router’s firewall become targets for additional network-based attacks. Even technically oriented users find it difficult to identify a wireless router cyberattack because router user interfaces are minimal, and the traffic sent from a compromised device to cyberattackers is typically invisible.
Tripwire’s Vulnerability and Exposure Research Team (VERT) has analyzed the security provided by the most popular wireless routers used in many small and home offices and found that 80 percent of Amazon’s top 25 best-selling SOHO wireless router models have security vulnerabilities. Of these vulnerable models, 34 percent have publicly documented exploits that make it relatively simple for attackers to craft either highly targeted attacks or general attacks targeting every vulnerable system they can find.
A few key security practices can help users can limit wireless router cyberattacks, the IT firm says. However, Tripwire’s study of wireless router security practices among IT professionals and employees who access corporate networks from remote locations shows that these practices are not widely used.
Findings include:
30 percent of IT professionals and 46 percent of employees do not change the default administrator password on their wireless routers. With access to the configuration interface, attackers can easily compromise the device.
55 percent of IT professionals and 85 percent of employees do not change the default Internet Protocol (IP) address on their wireless routers, making Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF
43 percent of IT professionals and 54 percent of employees use Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS
52 percent of IT professionals and 59 percent of employees have not updated the firmware on their routers to the latest version, so even when security updates from router vendors are available, most users do not receive the additional protection.
“VERT’s research and SANS recent discovery of ‘The Moon’ worm currently infecting exposed Linksys routers
