Title: WiFi routers could be exploited for huge internet attacks in UK – study
- As many as 24m routers across the world can be used by cybercriminals to launch massive attacks on internet infrastructure, while simultaneously disrupting home connections and costing communications companies dearly.
- The process is called attack amplification and it starts with the attacker selecting a target website.
- Internet pipes are clogged up, often wiping the original target offline and causing collateral damage, disrupting people’s home connections without them knowing and swamping ISP networks.
- “All that traffic coming back down to the user can saturate the access network. What the user sees is what appears to be an outage or an intermittent or slow service,” said Bruce van Nice, from Nominum, a software company serving the telecoms industry, which provided the Guardian with the data. “The user doesn't know anything about what is going on.”
- Nominum said over a single day in February more than 5.3m of the routers running the feature were used to generate attack traffic in Asia. An attack in January used up 70% of an internet providers Domain Name System servers.
- BT declined to comment when contacted by the Guardian. Virgin Media said it provides advice to users to deal with issues like this, pointing them to sites like this.
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