The reason is that many of these devices are not routers placed inside users' homes, but are so-called "edge" devices, often part of an ISP's internal infrastructure, such as routers placed in ISP boxes left inside apartment complexes or on street poles.Īnother source in the infosec community who spoke to ZDNet but did not want his name shared for this story confirmed that Alexey's vigilante efforts have also touched edge routers, not only those found in people's homes. "Remediation efforts must be done by the service providers."
"Rebooting grandma's router won't fix this," he said. Mursch told ZDNet that he doesn't believe the MikroTik situation will get better any time soon. In 2018, another vigilante renamed tens of thousands of MikroTik and Ubiquiti routers to "HACKED" and other messages to get owners' attention to update their devices. In 2017, a more devious vigilante hacker named The Janit0r deployed the BrickerBot malware that erased firmware or bricked IoT devices that had not been updated.Īlso in 2017, a hacker made over 150,000 printers spew out a message to their owners to raise everyone's awareness about the danger of leaving printers exposed online. At one point, the White Team's botnet became so big it battled with the botnet of the infamous Lizard Squad team for the title of the Internet's largest botnet. In late 2015, a team of vigilante hackers going by the name of the White Team launched the Linux.Wifatch malware that closed security holes on a variety of Linux-based routers. In 2014, a hacker accessed thousands of ASUS routers and planted text warnings inside computers with shared folders and hard drives that were located behind those routers, warning users to patch their ASUS device. Despite his good intentions, it is illegal to access another person or organization's equipment without consent.Īlexey's vigilante spree may be illegal, but he is definitely not the first. But technically speaking, Alexey is on the wrong side of the law. Fortunately, Alexey has been doing this clean-up on some users's behalf.
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