can a router be hacked from across the internet? what are possible ways it can be hacked?

Question

I hope it is OK to post here, please correct me if I am in the wrong spot.

I am attempting to learn more about information security. So just as an experiment I downloaded Kali Linux and a large dictionary of passwords gathered from several leaks, etc. and I used aircrack-ng to see if I could get into my wireless network.

To my surprise (horror?) my wifi password must have been in the dictionary and it was very easy to hack.

My wifi password is admittedly, not very secure but very arbitrary. So I am having a hard time believing anyone else would have had that password, which is making me wonder if I had been hacked at some point.

This is where I lack understanding. I only ever used this password for my wireless network.

Here is my question, is there any way that a router could be hacked from across the internet if someone had my IP address? Or would someone literally have to sit outside my house and try to hack into my network? I did have a port open for a multiplayer game if that makes a difference, I understand that can be a security risk, but apart from that, don't know much more.

thanks for any explanation.

Solution

There are actually 2 separate questions here, as well as a third possibility which should be considered -

1. Can your router be hacked across the Internet.

Depending on the router, this is possible - there are numerous routers which have back doors to allow them to be remotely accessed - in some cases its built in by service providers to allow them to upgrade routers, in others its negligent system build by the router manufacturers and in others its routers which have been compromised by 3 letter agencies. As a rule of thumb, if you have a router provided by your ISP or running default firmware you should consider it suspect. Routers running custom firmware (like DD-wrt) are less likely to be compromised, but this is not impossible.

2. How did my password land up in a dictionary

Its impossible to answer this definitively, however it is possible that

• your password is not as complex as you think it is and was in a local dictionary, or
• it was, in fact not in a local dictionary - rather some traffic was sniffed and the data was sent to an off-site system to be analyzed against a huge dictionary - these definately exist,
• The wireless encryption standard you are using was broken, and the password was decrypted because the encryption was broken rather then the password (WEP is very broken, other standards to a greater or lesser degree)

• Your router password may not have been arbitrary - it may have been a derivative of the mac address or some other formula created by the router manufacturer which was in use and was reverse engineered.

  3. The option you have not considered - That one of the DEVICES you use was compromised (for example through malware), and the password got out that way. (For that matter, it could have been a friend who used your WIFI's device) This is, IMHO, somewhat unlikely because it does not explain how the data got into the password list, but it is a more likely attack vector then the router having been compromised.

Comments

[Ramhound]

You cannot hack wireless network if your not close enough to connect but you can hack the router if it's configured so you can remotely configure it. Just disable that option, and unless it has a hidden capability (this does exist in older hardware) you are safe. Of course you should use a secure enough password to the administrator account that's used to configure it also.

[Vomit IT - Chunky Mess Style]

As for can a router be hacked from across the internet? what are possible ways it can be hacked?... if your router's web management interface e.g. TCP 443 or 80 is accessible from the WAN side then a simple brute for from there would be possible. Change your default password to the management interface and be sure to configure your settings to lock down the management ports from router's WAN or untrusted interfaces and test to confirm as such.