janrinok writes "A recent survey carried out by Tripwire, reported by the BBC, claims that "80% of the 25 best-selling routers available on Amazon are vulnerable to compromise". Security researcher Craig Young from Tripwire said exploits had been publicly discussed and published for more than one-third of these devices.
In a separate report, the Internet Storm Center (ISC) warned about a continuing attempt to exploit a vulnerability in 23 separate models of Linksys routers. A worm, called 'The Moon' is compromising Linksys routers and then scans for other potentially vulnerable systems. So far, wrote ISC researcher Johannes Ullrich in his blogpost, it is not clear why the routers are being compromised and what might be done with them. There are hints in the exploit code that the routers will at some point be gathered together into a network of compromised machines. Currently, he added, all the worm was doing was spreading to other Linksys routers.
The reason for the current European concern is a recent large scale attack on home routers in order to gather usernames and passwords for online bank accounts, reported by the Polish Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) and elsewhere."
(Score: 5, Informative) by evilviper on Monday February 24 2014, @04:36AM
Look at the DD-WRT list of supported models. Even better if the unit has USB:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/USB_storage#C ompatible_units [dd-wrt.com]
The D-Link DIR-632 was a great deal, selling for $35 on Amazon, trivial to upgrade to DD-WRT, and having a USB port for network attached storage or printer sharing, and 8 wired switch ports. Now that stocks are gone, prices have gone very high... $75 currently. Too bad.
You can also look for devices preloaded with DD-WRT, like the Buffalo brand.
DD-WRT is a bit finnicky in the UI department, but it can do anything you'd want... WiFi to wired bridge, WiFi repeater, WiFi AP, static/dynamic, QoS & throttling, SSH, WDS, etc.
I wouldn't recommend using an old PC, because of power consumption, alone. Never mind size, noise, maintenance, etc.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 1) by razza on Monday February 24 2014, @10:01PM
The main problem always seems to be ADSL support.
(Score: 1) by AnythingGoes on Wednesday February 26 2014, @04:47AM
An older netbook like Asus EEE 2G/701, on the other hand, is pretty decent and can be booted from a read-only SD card. The power consumption is less than 15W during normal operations if you turn off the screen. Comes with 3 USB ports too :)
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Wednesday February 26 2014, @06:47AM
An Eee 701 has 100BaseT ethernet, needs even slower USB-ethernet adapters for a second port. Only very slow 802.11g wireless on 2.4Ghz. etc. It'll use far more power than a purpose built router, and costs several times more. And you STILL need an ethernet switch to connect multiple wired devices. It's not a TERRIBLE option, but it's certainly not a good one, either.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.