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Posted by Gerald Vogt on May 3, 2007, 7:37 am
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>>> Hi, a while back, someone hacked into my 2wire wireless router, switched
>> How did they hack into the router?
>
> my guess is during an electical outage, the router went offline and reset to
> defaults; anyone can find generic default passwords on the internet and log
> in. i've logged into a neighbor's wireless myself that way.
That's why you always should check your equipment after events like
power outages or thunderstorms...
>> Where exactly did you find this machine name?
>
> the machine name was in the router at the time they were connected, and now
> it remains as an option in one of the routers drop-down menu's for "allow
> users thru the firewall to hosted applications". (ie, on the drop-down menu
> is my IP - 192.168.1.64 and this other "machine name"...)
That name is user defined. Unless you accidentally find the name
somewhere there is little you can do. You could leave the router running
as before and wait until they connect again. If they connect through
wireless you may be able to locate them...
> one other question ... I often test my inbound protection status with Steve
> Gibson's (www.grc.com) "Shields Up" utility. In past years, I always
> maintained "stealth" status on all ports, but now, due to some combo of
> OS/firewalls/routers, my common ports are not "stealth" but "closed".
"Stealth" is one of the most useless things in the internet world.
"Stealth" does not exist. A computer/router that does not answer is not
an "invisible" computer but simply a computer that does not answer. It
is almost like you would be standing in the middle of the street and
would not answer to anyone who talks to you: you are not stealthed but
very visibly there. You are just not answering.
Really stealth would be if everything was as if you were actually not
there. A computer that is not there, i.e. an IP address which is unused,
would have the upstream router return an error to an sender. If the
upstream router returns this error, it looks as if you are not there.
Then you would be really stealthed.
But all that "stealthing" which software firewalls and some routers do
is not worth the money. It may actually increase the incoming traffic to
your router/computer as any accidental sender to your IP address will
usually retry the connections several times if the answer times out. If
however the sender gets the "port closed" immediately as reply there
won't be retransmissions.
The important thing is that all your ports are closed. If everything is
closed you are secured.
Gerald
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