Ongoing DNS Hijack Attack Hits Consumer Modems and Routers

An ongoing DNS hijacking campaign has taken aim at consumer modems and routers. Multiple waves of the campaign have changed settings in the residential devices, sending traffic through any of a series of addresses hosted on services known to be welcoming to hackers and criminals.

In a Bad Packets Report featuring research by Troy Mursch, the details of the three-part (so far) campaign, stretching from late December 2018 through late March of this year, were laid out. In each, the DNS server settings of the router were changed to addresses on services located in Canada or Russia.

According to the report, some 17,000 devices were found to be vulnerable in a BinaryEdge scan. Mursch reports that common reasons for DNS hijacking accounts include advertising fraud and reconnaissance for phishing attacks. In cases where remote enterprise workers are targeted, industrial espionage and IP theft can also come into play.

Mursch recommends that individuals keep devices current on patches and updates and occasionally check the DNS settings of their modems and routers to make sure that the DNS servers used are those provided by the ISP or authorized by the user.

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