Is your router compromised?

Report shows growing number of website cyber attacks come from hacked home routers

WordFence report that in the past month alone they have seen over 57,000 unique home routers being used to attack WordPress sites. Those home networks are now being explored by hackers who have full access to them via the hacked home router. They can access workstations, mobile devices, wifi cameras, wifi climate control and any other devices that use the home WiFi network.

Half of the internet service providers we analyzed have routers with a very specific vulnerability. This vulnerability is known as the “misfortune cookie”. We will call it the MC vulnerability for short. It has been known for a few years and was first disclosed by CheckPoint in 2014. It is now being used to hack home routers. Using the tool below you can tell if you have the MC vulnerability.

The MC vulnerability exists in a service that your ISP uses to remotely manage your home router. That service listens on a “port” number, which is 7547. Besides the MC vulnerability, this port can have other vulnerabilities, one of which was disclosed a few months ago. Researchers have been discussing the dangers of port 7547 in home routers for a few years now.

Your ISP should not allow someone from the public internet to connect to your router’s port 7547. Only your ISP should be able to access this port to manage your home router. They have the ability to configure their network to prevent outsiders from accessing that port. Many ISPs do not block public access to port 7547.

You can use the tool mentioned and linked to below to determine if your port 7547 is open to the public internet. If it is, we suggest you contact your ISP and ask them to prevent outsiders from accessing that port on your home router. Even if you aren’t vulnerable to one of the two vulnerabilities we posted above, future vulnerabilities may emerge on port 7547. By blocking public access you will protect yourself and your home network.

Check if you are vulnerable

Visit the Wordfence site to see if your router is suspect. Just run the Scan Me test to determiner your router vulnerability.

How you can help

According to Shodan, a popular network analysis tool, over 41 million home routers world-wide have port 7547 open to the public internet. We are trying to get the word out to home users and ISPs to block this port and patch any vulnerable routers. This will help reduce attacks on the websites we protect and, far more importantly, it will help secure over 41 million home networks.

Reports include over 10,000 infected home routers in Algeria who use Telecom Algeria and over 11,000 hacked home routers in India with BSNL, another major ISP in that country, where the routers have already been hacked. Let’s help secure our fellow internet citizens and prevent others from having their home networks compromised.

You can help by sharing this post and empowering home users to check if they are vulnerable. They can then contact their ISPs with the information and this will gradually cause ISPs to close port 7547 to outside access and to disinfect and patch vulnerable routers.