Survey Reveals Users Have No Clue About Router Security

[tarekma7]

A recent survey of 2,205 regular users has proven once again that most people don't update router firmware, don't change default credentials, and don't generally know how to secure their devices.

For the past two-three years, there has been a deluge of news articles and research papers detailing large botnets built by exploiting router vulnerabilities and by hijacking devices still running default login credentials. These are the two main methods exploited by attackers.

The results of a survey carried out by fellow tech site Broadband Genie confirmed what most security researchers suspected, painting a clear and depressing picture of how careless or clueless some users are about keeping their router safe from hackers.

86% of respondents have never updated the router's firmware:

According to Broadband Genie, only 14 percent of the 2,205 respondents have updated their router's firmware and only 18 percent have changed the device's default admin account password.

That means that approximately five out of six routers are never updated with new firmware and four out of five devices run with factory credentials, becoming cannon fodder for modern botnets.

These botnets are known to aggressively mass-scan the Internet for new devices to infect, and unless internet service providers get involved in filtering the traffic that tries to exploit their router fleet, most of these devices are most likely infected with malware that has corralled them inside a botnet.

Full Article HERE