Protect Your Router or It Might Serve Malicious Websites

Cybercriminals are not always looking to hijack your device. Taking control of your network connection is sometimes just as good, as they can redirect your traffic to malicious websites. This lets them not only monitor your online tracks but also change where you land and how websites appear to you.

The internet relies on something called DNS (Domain Name System) to translate the domain names humans can remember into the IP addresses computers can understand. DNS is like a phone book your browser or computer uses to learn where a website is located on the internet.

Since computers also need to know where to ask for the information they need, they’re configured to contact a DNS server that sends queries further upstream until it gets an answer. If a hacker changes your computer system’s DNS setting to point to a malicious server, they control your traffic, in a similar way to your Internet Service Provider (ISP).

Attacks of this kind are neither uncommon nor difficult to pull off. Just this month, cybercriminals in Brazil compromised home routers specifically to modify their DNS settings. The purpose was to redirect connections to the websites of specific banks to cloned versions of the sites so they could collect sensitive information such as login credentials.

“The attack is insidious in the sense that a user is completely unaware of the change. The hijacking works without crafting or changing URLs in the user’s browser. A user can use any browser and his/her regular shortcuts, the user can type in the URL manually or even use it from mobile devices, such as a smartphone or tablet. The user will still be sent to the malicious website instead of to their requested website and the hijacking effectively works at the gateway level,” say researchers from Radware.

When victims try to log into their bank accounts, they reach the fake website where they are asked for information cybercriminals can use to empty their balance.

The exploits used by hackers have been available publicly since 2015. This shows that the age of a vulnerability is irrelevant as long as there are unpatched devices. You can check the vulnerability state of the connected devices in your home with Bitdefender Home Scanner. It recognizes the IoT on the network and is compatible with any security tool.

Image credit: Fotocizen