Caught my neighbor using 'password123' for his router admin...

I used to think a strong wifi password was enough, never touched the router admin login. Then last month I noticed my neighbor in apartment 3B was still using 'password123' for his admin panel, and I realized mine was probably just as bad. Now I change every default admin password on my home network to a 16-character random string, and I even turned off remote admin access on my Netgear router. Has anyone else had a wake-up call about router security after ignoring it for years?

2 comments

2 Comments

dianaanderson5d ago

Read a thing from Krebs on Security about botnets scanning for default router passwords and it kinda got me paranoid. They showed how easy it is for someone to brute force those admin panels if you leave them on the default settings. I went and changed mine to a long gibberish password right after, also disabled WPS because apparently that's a huge hole too.

jamie_carter875d ago

Is it really that likely someone is specifically targeting your router though? Most of these botnets are just scanning random IPs, and they'll usually move on if you have a basic password that isn't 'admin'. Turning off remote access is probably the biggest actual fix, but locking down the admin panel seems like overkill for a typical home setup.