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Critical ‘Rising Risk’ Attack Alert—Change Your Router Password Now
In a stark warning to the public, IBM’s X-Force unit has issued a dire alert about router passwords. It seems that an astonishing 86% of routers are still using default admin credentials, leaving users vulnerable to cyber attacks.
This alarming statistic comes on the heels of research conducted by Broadband Genie, which revealed that an astounding 56% of internet users have never changed their router’s default settings. Furthermore, a whopping 89% of users haven’t bothered to update their router firmware, essentially leaving any newly discovered vulnerabilities untouched and ripe for exploitation.
According to IBM X-Force threat intelligence analysts, the risks associated with this negligence are very real. In fact, attackers can gain control over inbound and outbound network data, allowing them to introduce a multitude of threats, including the redirection of users to malicious web pages, the ability to execute attacker-in-the-middle data-stealing attacks, distributed denial of service attack exploitation as part of a larger botnet of compromised routers, and the monitoring of user behavior.
What’s even more concerning is that these types of attacks can be extremely difficult to detect. Cyber criminals are not taking circuitous routes to evade security defenses; instead, they’re exploiting the very vulnerabilities we’re discussing today.
So what does this mean for you? In a nutshell, it means that leaving your router password as the default setting is essentially an open invitation to nefarious characters to snoop around and take what’s yours. And it’s not a difficult problem to mitigate either. By choosing a strong password and storing it securely using a password manager, you can ensure that remembering your password isn’t an issue.
In short, it’s imperative that you change your router password immediately to prevent these potential risks from becoming a reality.
Source: www.forbes.com
