Never use weak passwords again, be careful of your home routers and devices becoming zombies

Nowadays, there are more and more devices connected to the Internet in the home. Mobile phones, tablets, computers, TVs, cameras, smart speakers, etc. all need network access. It is not uncommon for a family to have 20+ Internet-connected devices. As a result, the security of the home network is particularly important. Think about your home WiFi password and router management password. Are they too simple?

Commonly used weak passwords in 2021 (Image source: NordPass)

Every year, cybersecurity agencies publish a list of the most insecure passwords of the year, and "12345", "12345678", "qwert", "password" and so on are always at the top. Moreover, no matter how cybersecurity agencies and the media remind us, the frequency of use of the above password combinations has not decreased at all. This gives criminals hiding in the network an opportunity to take advantage of it.

There are more and more Internet-connected devices at home (Image source: allhomecinema)

Once our wireless router is controlled by hackers, it may lead to personal privacy leakage and property loss. What’s more frightening is that even normal life will be affected.

Hackers can arbitrarily control our lights, sockets, televisions, refrigerators, and even toilets, causing users unbearable pain and exposing their lives completely to criminals.

Nowadays, we don’t pay much attention to the security of wireless routers. At most, we set a wireless password and then no longer pay attention to it.

I believe that the little protection measures taken by most of my friends are not very secure. They often use the same numbers or logical numbers as WiFi passwords for easy memorization.

This leaves an opportunity for criminals to crack WiFi, and they can easily crack our WiFi password. By the way, anyone who even sets such a simple WiFi password, not to mention the background password of the router, must be "admin".

Hackers control user devices to launch DDoS attacks (Image source: link11)

In this way, criminals can easily control our wireless routers and further invade our mobile phones, tablets, computers and other daily devices.

What’s even more frightening is that after hackers take control of the home router, they will implant Trojan viruses into the user’s various Internet devices and then steal the privacy and property of the infected devices.

They can even infect the devices of visiting relatives and friends through the user's device, and then infect their home Internet devices after they return home. In addition, hackers can control these infected devices to launch DDoS attacks on their own targets, making the user's own home Internet devices become "zombies" for hackers to attack other people's networks.

Here we recommend that friends first enhance the security of their WiFi passwords by using "letters + numbers + symbols" and choosing WPA2 and above encryption methods. This will give them strong security, and it will be difficult for general criminals to decipher such passwords.

Change the router login username and password

In addition, do not use the same password as the one you use to connect to WiFi as the password for the router management backend. You need to set a more complex password separately. Finally, we need to turn off the "remote management" option in the router's backend management to avoid remote attacks by criminals and further improve the security of the home network.