How Hackers use ignorance to their own Advantage at 9:09 AM

Who is to blame?! Hackers or Network Administrators/Engineers? 

If you leave your house door open or your keys on the door & thieves easily get into your house and steal all your valuable assets; who do you blame, the thieves or yourself? That's the question!

A few days ago i made a blog post about Cybersecurity in Botswana, stating how most Network Administrators are ignorant, leaving router passwords as default, putting internet users in grave danger! Today i am gonna show you how easy it is to gain access to a router with a default password in 20 seconds! Yep! its that easy folks!

Now if you have physical access to the router, good for you... but as hackers we somehow enjoy the thrill of attacking a network Wirelessly! Assuming that the Wireless network was left open (no WiFi password) or the hacker has already cracked the WiFi password...taking over this network would simply be a piece of cake! All the hacker has to do is simply open a Web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Opera) and go to the router login page using the router IP address: 192.168.1.1, 192.168.0.1 etc..depends on the type of the router. 

Usually on the router login page, the router model is always written somewhere. So in this case, you can see at the Top left corner of the 1st screenshot, that the model of this router is "DLINK DIR- 655"...easy! So since the hacker has the router model, what he has to do now is simply go to the Default Router Passwords website & start looking for DLINK DIR-655 default username & password and login to that router...see! its that easy! Once he has logged in to the router he can do pretty much anythin he wants; reboot the router, disconnect the internet, block some or all users from the network, sniff the network & grab all username & passwords etc. 


It takes around 4 minutes for the hacker to execute this attack...This not only poses a serious threat to companies but to home users as well...i would like to encourage Network engineers from Internet Service Providers (ISPs), to change router passwords for the safety of their customers. Follow this tutorial to check if you may be a victim, if you are...try to change the router password yourself (Google is there to help you). You never know, someone could be spying on you, and if you are buying stuff online with that credit of yours, don't be surprised if you lose all your money...Take these precautions seriously!

Cybersecurity begins with You - Be aware, Be Secure!