How easy is it to hack a domestic wifi router?

PhillM said:
No,no now don't get this out of proportion.
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Yes sorry. Didn't mean to sound so combative but I do seriously doubt your initial assertion. My contention is that that WPA2 without a common SSID and a stupid password is not "trivial" to compromise. Government agencies aside the average person doesn't need to panic about their WPA2 wifi security. I suggest that if Bad Things are in play here (rather than something benign like a family member not realising all those moves were HD) then either a compromise of PCs behind the router OR bad security setup by the OP's PC man are the most likely candidates.

"could it be hacked" might be one of several questions including either or both of compromising the router itself or the wireless security. I believe you are talking about the wireless security. If so I suggest the answer is not "easily" so long as it's been set up half way sensibly.
 
4.16.8 System Log
Choose menu “System Tools → System Log”, you can view the logs of the Router....

May show a list of connected computers... Then you can know for sure.

or:

4.16.9 Statistics
Choose menu “System Tools → Statistics”, you can view the statistics of the Router, including
total traffic and current traffic of the last Packets Statistic Interval.

If you read the manual it explains all of these.

Oh and a well secured Wifi network is not easy to hack.
 
The real problem is that the hacking software isn't really that. What it is a is a listing of the default passwords of wifi routers. The software identifies the router make and model and uses the factory settings to enter get onto the system. So if you don't change the password to one of your choosing, the software can break into the network. Look at the manual and find out how to change the password to prevent this happening again.
 
duncan99210 said:
The real problem is that the hacking software isn't really that. What it is a is a listing of the default passwords of wifi routers. The software identifies the router make and model and uses the factory settings to enter get onto the system...
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That's hacking with a wired connection. Routers do not have default wireless passwords, although many have a default SSID. If a router is set up with a WPA wireless network, it is essentially impossible to hack.
 
There seems to be some confusion here between hacking routers and hacking wifi networks.

Before you can get to the router you have to access the network itself.

In the case reported by the OP (mysterious use of bandwidth) why on earth would hacking the router itself have anything to do with it?

If you want to use someone's bandwith on a wifi network you just need to be able to connect to the network - there's no need to do anything to the router.

As Nigel has repeated above, if your wireless network is secured with WPA2 then it is very unlikely that anyone will bother to hack it as it takes far too much resource to be worthwhile. If you don't know how your wireless network is secured, then Google the make and model of your router and find out how to access the settings. Or call an IT person.
 
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mrming said:
it takes far too much resource to be worthwhile.
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Doing a little research last night on the current state of play with WPA2.....yes brute force cracking of WPA2 with a decent password requires too many resources to currently be practical. However it seems there are rainbow tables available with a million "words" hashed with the 1000 most common SSIDs which makes things much more practical if users keep a common, default SSID (e.g. "NETGEAR") and use a short, simple passphrase. If you google "top 1000 ssids" you'll see that changing your SSID to "dave" or "andy" is not a good plan either.

Bottom line: to best avoid brute force attacks use a strong pass*phrase*, something *long* using upper and lower case, digits and non-alphanumerics. If your router has an SSID of "linksys" and passphrase of "password" I wouldn't fancy its chances against PhillM's minions (in their off hours).
 
This is all getting in the realms of Daily Mail scaremongering.

In my experience, (setting up customers' routers is a small but common part of my job) all UK ISP supplied routers come as standard with a strong password on a sticker on the back of the router WPA2 and no default passwords. There is always a *theoretical* chance of someone hacking your router, but in reality, you're more likely to win the lottery.

My best advice is to get a new free router from your ISP, don't play around with it, install it exactly as they suggest, and you'll be fine, and have no need to worry about Chinese/Russian state hackers parked up outside your house hacking. If someone wanted your wifi that badly, it would genuinely be much easier to break in and read the password off the back of the router!

Going to the OPs original question, unless the shop set it up with no password whatsoever, it's a pretty slim chance that an IT whizz with the skills to hack a router, in addition to owning a boat just happened to be anchored within range of your wifi, which on a dongle, is unlikely to be particularly long range!

I'd look elsewhere.
It's not routine nor easy to hack wifi, although theoretically possible.
 
chrisbitz said:
Going to the OPs original question, unless the shop set it up with no password whatsoever, it's a pretty slim chance that an IT whizz with the skills to hack a router, in addition to owning a boat just happened to be anchored within range of your wifi, which on a dongle, is unlikely to be particularly long range!

I'd look elsewhere.
It's not routine nor easy to hack wifi, although theoretically possible.
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I would agree - providing the router had been setup with a sensible password. But as the OP doesn't seem to know - other than that his devices are set to automatically connect then I would keep poor wifi security in the list of possibles.
Along with that I would suspect the devices may have downloaded some updates - but not knowing what devices are attached or the state of them when left overnight it is only a guess. I know iDevices can be set to automatically download updates and I'd assume Droid are the same - Windoze certainly does by default - but only when the devices are switched on - entirely possible with phones and tablets as they're generally never turned fully off ...

I'd still want to revisit the wifi security settings as a priority - just to ensure its on WPA2 and has a sensible password set (ie not the boat name!)
 
laika said:
Doing a little research last night on the current state of play with WPA2.....yes brute force cracking of WPA2 with a decent password requires too many resources to currently be practical. However it seems there are rainbow tables available with a million "words" hashed with the 1000 most common SSIDs which makes things much more practical if users keep a common, default SSID (e.g. "NETGEAR") and use a short, simple passphrase. If you google "top 1000 ssids" you'll see that changing your SSID to "dave" or "andy" is not a good plan either...
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Interesting stuff that, of course if the chap who came up with the idea had watched the Imitation Game he'd have realised that knowing the 'clear' text of part of the encrypted message reduces hugely the number of possibilities that need to be tried :) In principle then, personalising the SSID and using a >20 char WPA password reduce the unlikely (as others have pointed out) chance of your WiFi being hacked.

Back to the OPs question and minimising the chances of hacking...

I have an MR3020, assuming the firmware is broadly similar the menu choices below should work.

The first hurdle will be accessing the device. To do this its necessary to know the base IP address so that you can direct your browser to go there, this is true whether you access it wirelessly or by ethernet cable. The default address should be 192.168.0.1 so simply type that string into your browser's URL field, when connected through the router, and you should be shown a login panel.

Next, login as administrator; the default administrator userid should be 'admin', its default password is also 'admin'. Hopefully you can access as admin, if you cant none of the rest of this will work. If the admin password is still the default, first change it through System Tools > Password; you might want to change the admin userid as well. Press 'Save' if any change made

Next check the SSID; Wireless > Wireless Settings and look at the 'Wireless Network Name', if this is not personalised then do so - mine is based on the boat name. Press 'Save' if any change made

Then check wireless security settings; Wireless > Wireless Security and change to WPA/WPA2 if necessary. Choose a password of greater than 20 characters - sorry about that but it seems less than 20 slightly increases the vulnerability. Press 'Save' if any change made

With the 3420 you may also be able to reduce the transmission strength of the routers WiFi signal. Assuming you only want to use it onboard, not all round the marina, look for and tweak something thats rated in Db's.

Now turn the router off and on

That should keep the OP busy for a bit ;)

EDIT: Meant to add that WPS is also recognised as a weakness for hacking so disabling that is generally recommended. On the MR3020, use the WPS menu item and select 'Disable'

EDIT2: If you've got this far and changed stuff described above; you'll also need to change the network access on all devices that you want to use so that they reflect any new SSID and passwords
 
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The most effective way of preventing hacking is often to switch the router off when you're not using it.
 
nigelmercier said:
If WEP, then I agree. With WPA2, about 1000 computer years.
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Unfortunately, not true. There is software called reaver (which I found using a simple Google search!) which promises to crack a WPA2 password in less than 10-15 hours, depending on the length of the password. Your thousand years might have been true when WPA2 was first implemented; it isn't any more.
 
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duncan99210 said:
The real problem is that the hacking software isn't really that. What it is a is a listing of the default passwords of wifi routers. The software identifies the router make and model and uses the factory settings to enter get onto the system. So if you don't change the password to one of your choosing, the software can break into the network. Look at the manual and find out how to change the password to prevent this happening again.
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I suspect that's true. A friend hacked in to neighbours router, don't know what program was used but she phoned her son to give him the name of the secured network and within a few minutes he phoned back and gave her a password to try - worked first time. No doubt it had been left at the default.
 
nigelmercier said:
I know, I've got it as part of Kali Linux (used to be called BackTrack). Reaver only works on routers with WPS, as there is a bug in some implementations.

More info: http://arstechnica.com/business/201...source-tool-for-hacking-wifi-protected-setup/
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Routers often lock out after too many attempts to guess WPS PIN nowadays. This slows things down as something like Reaver needs to wait for the lock to clear before trying again. Of course there are also a variety of methods used to workaround the problem with varying degrees of success.

As always, things move on. I think some new router firmware may already be checking first and last parts of WPS PIN concurrently to plug the WPS issue more effectively.

I doubt the OPs problem was due to updates (suggested in #6) as he indicated that close to 30GB seemed to vanish overnight. Someone obtaining the WiFi key or malware on one of his devices are both possibilities as mentioned by others. It really depends on the level of security he employs for Wifi and his devices. If it was poor then it is possible that a third party used his remaining data allowance.
 
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Mistroma said:
Routers often lock out after too many attempts to guess WPS PIN nowadays.
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I watched a bit of Superman on TV years ago. He hacked (for good reasons, of course) into a computer system by manual brute-force. I was impressed that the system would keep up with Superman's flying fingers. But not so much with the lack of failures limitation!

Mike.
 
Mistroma said:
Routers often lock out after too many attempts to guess WPS PIN nowadays. This slows things down as something like Reaver needs to wait for the lock to clear before trying again.
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Back in my University days, I wrote a program to throw a dictionary at windows NT 3.5 for a given username, and it could process 20,000 password rejections a second!
You can see why all modern security systems pause for 3 seconds or so when rejecting a password now!
 
For the benefit of those trying to help on supposition of access details and configuration then the OP's router default access is:

192.168.1.1 with user "admin" and password "password" - enter in lower case

Once in then there is a "quick set-up" feature for the basics and establishing secure access.
 
Plenty of good advice, already for the OP. Certainly enough for him to secure his network.

One possibility is that the local WIND technician sets the same wifi password for all the routers / devices that he sets up. In that case, any other local person who has a similar contract will know your password and can conserve their own data quota by using your wifi.
It is surprising how many techies re-use the same passwords.
So, changing the wifi password to something complex and personal will be a low hassle starting point.
 
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