Hacker locally compromises a user's router; this is what can protect help protect you from this unfortunate fate.
Episode #9-36 released on April 19, 2019
I spend a lot of time on the Tech Support Reddit and there was a situation where a user was experiencing a hacker breaking into his own WIFI network and then compromising his own security. In order to help solve this issue you need to understand a lot about the local vulnerabilities of a WIFI router that can only be exploited locally, but they are truly exploitable.
The weakest link in any security model is the password and the password strength itself. There is, also, an issue related to security related to how WPS is integrated into the router's security module and further still an issue relating to the exact implementation of WPA2. While, we can't be sure how the hack got into this victim's network, we know they is snooping on the victim's traffic and particularly getting access to the user's email and password, which is probably being sent over the Internet in Plaintext. This is possible because of how packets are transmitted over the network allowing for a man in the middle attack to occur without having to come between the user and the router, which means that unless the user is transmitting over an encrypted connection, the hack can see all. In the case of encrypted connections, the hacker can see where the user is going online, even if they have no access to the data, and with revelations from Snowden being used, the metadata from that connection is just as valuable as the content of the connection itself.
Now, the solution would be to change password for a complicated password and turn off WPS, and lock down the security for the router, but there is no guarantee that keeps the hacker out, so the only logical thing to do is to do in this case is to use a VPN, even one that outputs locally to fully encrypt all traffic end to end so the hacker cannot gain access to the content transmitted in plaintext or gain any intel in the form of metadata of where the user is connecting to. While, I personally have stated in the past that hiding location promotions from VPNs is utter crap especially when dealing with applications who can easily get their location data from the actual GPS module, a VPN can help protect users from man in the middle attacks like those that can be leveraged against your own router. Note: VPN connection must be made from PC to End Point, not on the router itself for this to protect against MITM attacks of the kind referred to in this episode.
Host : Steve Smith | Music : | Editor : Steve Smith | Producer : Zed Axis Dot Net