One of the weaker points in your Internet infrastructure are routers, let’s face it unless you have automated firmware updates often you purchase a router, and then never update it again as you do not access the GUI. perhaps it’s time to check if a new firmware is available as the majority of routers has some sort of vulnerability.
The American Consumer published a paper with more than 186 different brands and types of routers including Asus, AVM, Belkin, Cerio, D-Link, Linksys TrendNet, NetGear, Sierra Wireless, TP-Link, Yamaha and Zyxel. They found that the average vulnerable router contains 186 vulnerabilities. In total they found 32,003 vulnerabilities on the 155 vulnerable devices (83%), the other 23 (17%) routers contained no security issues. From all vulnerabilities, 28% were considered high-risk and critical.
“On average, routers contained 12 critical vulnerabilities and 36 high-risk vulnerabilities, across the entire sample. The most common vulnerabilities were medium-risk, with an average of 103 vulnerabilities per router,” the researchers write in their report.
Simply resetting your router is not enough,” the study warns. “Automated updates are by far the most feasible option to keep IoT devices and consumer data safe.”
The study stresses the severe consequences of Wi-Fi router manufacturers leaving IoT devices unpatched for known vulnerabilities and the urgency for these manufacturers to commit more resources to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities in open source to reduce cybersecurity threats that put consumers, the infrastructure, and the economy at risk.
A full copy of the study is available online here. And with this news-item we’de like to recommend it yes, update your router firmware today okay?
