[HN Gopher] Please Log in with Router's Password
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Please Log in with Router's Password
        
       Author : fny
       Score  : 183 points
       Date   : 2021-08-10 20:41 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.google.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.google.com)
        
       | jonplackett wrote:
       | This has gone meta now and the search link just links back to
       | this HN article.
        
       | coldacid wrote:
       | Funny enough, this very page was the top result for me on Google.
        
       | soheil wrote:
       | I suggest anyone wanting to see the pages in the search result to
       | click on the google cache version instead of clicking on the link
       | itself exposing your IP address.
        
         | AshamedCaptain wrote:
         | I am quite sure there are enough preload/prefetch links in the
         | Google results pages to make this irrelevant (and crash the
         | poor routers' owners' downstream links).
        
       | prasanthabr wrote:
       | Woah! Never thought this would be crawled by the google bot.
       | Thanks for sharing
        
       | Johnny555 wrote:
       | I think this is more the fault of manufacturers than end users.
       | 
       | Routers should be secure by default, and it should be hard to do
       | something that will make it insecure. The router manufacturers
       | are the supposed experts when it comes to networking, expecting
       | every consumer to even know the risks of exposing their router
       | admin interface to the world is not a reasonable assumption.
        
         | Pxtl wrote:
         | These routers are secure by default. This is only visible
         | because users have chosen to have their routers expose their
         | admin pages to the public internet.
         | 
         | I have never seen a router that had its admin page visible to
         | the WAN by default.
        
         | sathackr wrote:
         | So it's the car companies fault if I crash my car?
         | 
         | They should limit vehicle speed to 5mph so I don't hurt myself
         | or others.
         | 
         | I have used many of these routers. Admin access on the wan port
         | is blocked by default and must be enabled by the user.
        
           | solarkraft wrote:
           | Lackluster comparison (a modern consumer router should be
           | more like a self steering car), but modern cars indeed have
           | safety features to prevent you from crashing.
           | 
           | Of course, both with the car and the router there are good
           | arguments that you should be able to do the dumb thing if you
           | know you need it. If it has to be explicitly enabled after
           | intense warnings, the protective duty (as someone knowing
           | better) can possibly be considered fulfilled - or you can
           | still argue that it should be especially hard to do to block
           | out people who don't listen to warnings.
        
           | Johnny555 wrote:
           | Do you want to require that router users pass a government
           | proficiency test _and_ carry insurance to cover their
           | liability for unsafe network use? Otherwise the analogy with
           | driving a car is not quite complete.
        
           | kube-system wrote:
           | My car will literally hit the brakes for me if I am about to
           | crash into something. A router marketed to a non-professional
           | should do the same.
        
           | sophacles wrote:
           | You are making a very good point: the order of gear shifting
           | was tightly regulated after a lot of accidents caused by NDLR
           | order (instead of the now-standard PRNDL). In fact most
           | automotive interfaces have regulations to standardize them
           | after enough accidents were caused by people getting new cars
           | that had different interfaces.
        
         | Alupis wrote:
         | I haven't bought a consumer router in well over a decade that
         | isn't secure by default. Universally they all prohibit
         | accessing the router via the WAN interface, and have reasonable
         | firewall defaults. Many these days even include a randomized
         | unique password for every router, stuck to the side of the
         | device with a sticker.
         | 
         | These routers were put on the internet on purpose, by people
         | that seem to know what they are doing (universities and
         | businesses), and none seem to have default credentials. Seems
         | reasonable to me.
        
         | paxys wrote:
         | Is there any mainstream router brand that exposes admin pages
         | to the internet by default?
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | z80x86 wrote:
       | When you include omitted results, you'll get the entire set of
       | ~7000. The each result is nearly identical, so Google will
       | initially filter them out.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | soheil wrote:
       | Here is another example of what Google wasn't designed to do:
       | https://www.google.com/search?q=intitle%3A%22index+of%22+mp3
        
       | gennarro wrote:
       | This is a list of the routers with the best SEO
        
       | mrkramer wrote:
       | Google dorking at its finest.
        
       | FridayoLeary wrote:
       | It's a slightly recursive submission.
        
         | yakubin wrote:
         | https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=recursion
        
       | beezischillin wrote:
       | Some of these routers can be crazy insecure. Just some fun from
       | my own experience: before I got mine switched into bridge mode by
       | my ISP I managed to disable the wifi on it despite the ISP
       | blocking that functionality. How? By removing the disabled
       | attribute from the select element via the devtools. I also know a
       | friend who found his password in plaintext in a script tag in his
       | router's login page. I understand that nothing is absolutely
       | secure but this is just tempting fate.
        
       | aetherspawn wrote:
       | Hi folks, not much to see here.
       | 
       | These routers are very well designed, receive regular firmware
       | updates and are overall very solid. The only router that I
       | haven't had to reboot since I've owned it (for nearly 18 months
       | now).
       | 
       | As others have said, this is not the default setting, and you're
       | actually warned when you try and enable external access. But for
       | some, this is useful. Since this router supports a VPN server,
       | external access could be the only way to troubleshoot it if
       | you're not on-site.
        
       | paxys wrote:
       | Funny enough just 45 minutes later this very HN thread is the top
       | result on Google.
        
         | nicce wrote:
         | We live in the endless loop folks! It took me a while to
         | realize if it was actually the purpose of this post.
         | 
         | Edit: Yes, it was not.
        
           | slim wrote:
           | It is not. The purpose is to show misconfigured access points
           | accessible through the internet
        
           | soheil wrote:
           | I don't think that was the purpose of this post.
        
           | cduzz wrote:
           | This reminds me of when Sergey Brin explained recursion to
           | Terry Gross in this interview (14:45 seconds into the
           | interview)
           | 
           | https://freshairarchive.org/segments/google-founders-
           | larry-p...
        
             | JasonFruit wrote:
             | Terry Gross is one of the very best interviewers I have
             | ever heard. Her interviews and classical music alone make
             | public radio worthwhile.
        
       | Alupis wrote:
       | Folks - these routers are secure. There is nothing to see here,
       | move along.
       | 
       | Here's the user manual for the TP-Link AC2300 "Archer C7", as
       | found in the google results:
       | 
       | https://static.tp-link.com/2019/201912/20191231/7106508598_A...
       | 
       | Step 2 of first time setup forces a default password change.
       | There is no way around this step.
       | 
       | The defaults for the router also do not allow router access from
       | the WAN port.
       | 
       | This means:
       | 
       | 1) These routers all have secured passwords that are non-default.
       | 
       | 2) These routers were deliberately placed on the internet by
       | people that knew enough about them to do so.
       | 
       | Just because it's not how _you_ would configure your router doesn
       | 't make it wrong. There are legit reasons to place a router on
       | the internet, so long as it's secured properly... how else would
       | you remotely manage a router at a different physical location,
       | for instance.
       | 
       | __Lastly__ click "Next Page" on the OP search results. The
       | estimated 7,000+ results becomes 21. Many of which are HN
       | aggregators reporting on this thread here.
       | 
       | So... out of the possible millions of routers TP-Link has sold in
       | this model line, less than 21 are on the public internet - many
       | of which no longer load via IP address (indicating they are no
       | longer publicly accessible), and the rest have professional
       | CNAME's attached, indicating professional management.
       | 
       | Nothing here...
        
         | jfrunyon wrote:
         | > So... out of the possible millions of routers TP-Link has
         | sold in this model line, less than 21 are on the public
         | internet
         | 
         | Make that 47,000 of them on Shodan:
         | https://www.shodan.io/search?query=hash%3A-904286784
         | 
         | > 1) These routers all have secured passwords that are non-
         | default.
         | 
         | You have a very interesting definition of "secured" if you
         | think they are all actually secured.
         | 
         | > 2) These routers were deliberately placed on the internet by
         | people that knew enough about them to do so.
         | 
         | Just because they knew enough to click a checkbox doesn't mean
         | they knew enough to do so. If they knew enough, they wouldn't
         | have done so.
         | 
         | You seem to be under the mistaken impression that embedded
         | devices (like consumer routers) don't usually have glaring
         | security holes. But they do.
        
         | szidev wrote:
         | not every tp-link model (or revision, or locale, or firmware
         | version) that shares a web interface with the c7 requires you
         | to manually set a password. even if that were the case, there
         | are bound to be users who aren't security savvy and chose a
         | very weak password (e.g. "password", "admin").
         | 
         | many tp-link routers also have configurable vpn servers built
         | in, which can open up the whole network to malicious actors.
        
         | mullingitover wrote:
         | I would love to know how these are secured. I doubt there's MFA
         | or even rate limiting.
         | 
         | > 2) These routers were deliberately placed on the internet by
         | people that knew enough about them to do so.
         | 
         | That's making some very generous assumptions.
        
           | csydas wrote:
           | >That's making some very generous assumptions.
           | 
           | Disagree. In my current country of living, I'm not even sure
           | how I'd properly expose the router I use to the public
           | internet since I sit behind the ISP's NAT-ing, and even when
           | I lived in the US, I am not confident I could tell you how to
           | publicly expose the modem provided by Comcast for non-local
           | access, much less how someone without any tech experience
           | might do this.
           | 
           | If this was a prevalent problem because of default settings,
           | I'd expect far more than 7800 results; I am not willing to
           | concede every instance is intentional, but 7800 out of the
           | billions of routing devices in the world showing up on this
           | search enforces my understanding that these 7800 entries are
           | special in some way.
           | 
           | >I doubt there's MFA or even rate limiting.
           | 
           | MFA is not common at all on consumer routers, which at least
           | quite a few on the first page result are, same with rate
           | limiting.
           | 
           | Even for Enterprise grade gear, the threat isn't the user-
           | defined password, it's the manufacturer backdoors, which
           | we've seen many of in the last few years. Rate limiting
           | doesn't do much if you have a fair chance that you've got a
           | back door.
           | 
           | What likely __does__ help is that as far as I know, "Enable
           | Web Access from WAN" is by default *disabled* on most
           | consumer routers (and enterprise? that I'm not sure of), so I
           | think that this leads credence to the devices on the Google
           | results being exposed intentionally to some degree. (The
           | owners' knowledge level not withstanding, this is a fairly
           | out of the way setting, at least on my Asus router)
        
             | Alupis wrote:
             | > but 7800 out of the billions of routing devices in the
             | world showing
             | 
             | Click "Next Page" - estimated results turns into 21 results
             | in total... of which a bunch are dead links, a bunch are HN
             | aggregators... leaving just a small handful of actual
             | devices on the internet.
        
             | jfrunyon wrote:
             | > I am not confident I could tell you how to publicly
             | expose the modem provided by Comcast for non-local access
             | 
             | You likely couldn't. That setting is usually gated behind
             | some sort of "technician" or "mso" account (or not present,
             | or only accessible from the devices telnet/ssh interface).
             | Of course, it's probably not difficult to guess Comcast's
             | password; past experience with other companies suggests you
             | try things like "comcast" or "C0mc4s7". (Not even joking,
             | Suddenlink and Spectrum/TWC.)
             | 
             | > much less how someone without any tech experience might
             | do this.
             | 
             | Easy. It's a button that their kid clicked while playing
             | around.
             | 
             | > MFA is not common at all on consumer routers, which at
             | least quite a few on the first page result are, same with
             | rate limiting.
             | 
             | Are you trying to say that's a positive for exposing it on
             | the internet...?
        
           | Alupis wrote:
           | These are not high end enterprise grade kit, folks. Expecting
           | things like MFA, secondary VPN endpoints, etc is just absurd
           | for the target audience of this device.
           | 
           | Again, just because you wouldn't configure it this way
           | doesn't make it wrong. It's as secure as it can be, short of
           | throwing a bunch of other kit in front of it, and then why
           | would you be using a $100 consumer router anyway?
           | 
           | The only vulnerability here is the possibility of a 0-Day.
           | Everything else is either misguided or screaming for the sake
           | of it.
        
             | SheinhardtWigCo wrote:
             | > The only vulnerability here is the possibility of a
             | 0-Day.
             | 
             | That's not exactly uncommon in cheap consumer routers.
             | 
             | No rate limiting is as good as no authentication.
        
               | jrockway wrote:
               | I'm a big fan of rate limiting (and even rate limit my
               | static pages) but if your password is secure enough, the
               | lack of a rate limit isn't going to help attackers.
               | 
               | I kind of agree with the comment that started this thread
               | -- people that have explicitly decided to expose their
               | consumer-grade routers directly to the Internet probably
               | know about password managers. Even if you do guess the
               | password and compromise the router, all you'll have is
               | some remote office that is getting TLS errors because of
               | your MITM, and best case control of some unpatched
               | Windows 3.1 machine and maybe some developer's local
               | MySQL install happily listening on port 3306 somewhere.
               | That's not great, but it's a risk that some people are
               | willing to take.
        
               | Alupis wrote:
               | > That's not exactly uncommon in cheap consumer routers.
               | 
               | That's, in my opinion, the only fair criticism available
               | here.
               | 
               | > No rate limiting is as good as no authentication.
               | 
               | Trying to even load some of the links found in Google
               | takes 10's of seconds. That's effectively a rate limit,
               | even if it doesn't temp-ban per IP address.
               | 
               | Someone would have to dump the firmware to find out, but
               | it would be trivial for each device to generate their own
               | salt - making a potential lack of rate limit a non-issue.
        
               | jfrunyon wrote:
               | The load times are most likely primarily caused either by
               | slow JS or high RTT/multiple requests, either of which
               | could be trivially bypassed by an attacker. Or an
               | attacker could just fire off 100 requests at the same
               | time and saturate the bandwidth anyway, despite a high
               | latency. And any high latency would likely be
               | significantly lower if you happen to be in the same
               | geographic area.
               | 
               | Latency is not rate-limiting.
        
           | gsich wrote:
           | That would also be an assumption.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | nickstinemates wrote:
         | SD-WAN / VPN / Many many many other solutions.
        
         | jrochkind1 wrote:
         | What you say is sensible, except for:
         | 
         | > The estimated 7,000+ results becomes 21. Many of which are HN
         | aggregators reporting on this thread here.
         | 
         | Nope, Google is just collapsing them because they are all
         | identical copies of the same "page", being the same login
         | screen. Most of them look like routers, you can ask Google to
         | "include" them all and see for yourself.
         | https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Please+log+in+with+router...
        
         | fny wrote:
         | OP. I'm posting this because I discovered a box at the hostel
         | I'm at on Google after fat fingering the IP by mistake. (It's
         | disconnected already.) The password was easily guessable.
         | 
         | Aside from the anecdata, a counter argument is that the router
         | manufacturer has taken no steps to obscure the routers from
         | search engines. Sure someone could simply IP scan, but you have
         | to admit this is a little absurd.
        
         | amanzi wrote:
         | You're making some massive assumptions here.
         | 
         | Exposing your router's admin page to the internet is not good
         | security practice. These routers are protected by nothing but a
         | password, and I couldn't see anything in the manual that
         | enforces password length/complexity. So while the password
         | might be non-default, it could still be incredibly insecure.
         | 
         | Also, to expose these routers to the internet, all it takes is
         | a single checkbox to enable "Remote management". So your
         | assumption that these have all been deliberately placed on the
         | internet also doesn't hold up because I can definitely see a
         | curious home user playing with these settings without realising
         | the impact of this. There have been tons of similar reports in
         | the past where home users have exposed things to the internet
         | without realising the impact.
        
         | system2 wrote:
         | Why would the search engines index these though? That's the
         | question, not their default security.
        
         | lmilcin wrote:
         | > Folks - these routers are secure. There is nothing to see
         | here, move along.
         | 
         | If experience is any guide, they are not.
         | 
         | Consumer routers have horrible track of embarrassing, easily
         | exploitable vulnerabilities. That are not patched for a long
         | time or ever.
         | 
         | And exposing your router to public like that suggests the owner
         | knows very little about security. This typically goes in hand
         | with other neglect. Tell me, how many home users that are not
         | security conscious keep their routers regularly patched and
         | will replace the router when the manufacturer stops supporting
         | them?
        
         | ericyan wrote:
         | > These routers all have secured passwords that are non-
         | default.
         | 
         | Secure passwords is just a tiny subset of non-default
         | passwords. Chances of an average human being being able to come
         | up with a password with enough entropy to be called as secure
         | is pretty low.
         | 
         | > These routers were deliberately placed on the internet by
         | people that knew enough about them to do so.
         | 
         | This means these people knows how to expose the management
         | interface to the internet. It does not mean these people have
         | enough knowledge on securing their devices -- based on their
         | actions, it is more likely that the opposite is true.
        
           | ascar wrote:
           | > Chances of an average human being being able to come up
           | with a password with enough entropy to be called as secure is
           | pretty low.
           | 
           | https://xkcd.com/936/
           | 
           | So you think the chance of human beings to come up with 4
           | random words is pretty low?
           | 
           | You can't brute force millions of guesses per second through
           | a web interface. 40 bits of entropy is already plenty for
           | internet usage especially when the password is properly
           | hashed with something like bcrypt.
        
       | eganist wrote:
       | To the reader: if this is your first exposure to finding things
       | that aren't supposed to be exposed to the internet and you're
       | finding it interesting enough to want to learn more, there's a
       | tool commonly used among security practitioners called Shodan
       | that enables a much more tunable search for exposed assets.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shodan_(website) - deeper reading.
       | I'm not affiliated.
       | 
       | ---
       | 
       | It's also a super basic intro to proper google-fu (which you can
       | google to find others' takes on how to become somewhat effective
       | at, erm, googling). Back when I used to blog on Microsoft-related
       | topics, it was common to construct extremely narrow queries to
       | find exposed confidential documents in Skydrive accounts which we
       | could then sift through to find bloggable material.
       | 
       | e.g site:[skydrive domain] filetype:.pptx "Microsoft
       | Confidential" etc.
       | 
       | Or one which still works:
       | 
       | https://www.google.com/search?q="Microsoft+Confidential"+sit...
       | 
       | lmao I'm going to have some fun tonight.
        
         | kryogen1c wrote:
         | i think my first exposure to shodan was from viss
         | 
         | https://youtu.be/-T-3buBwMEQ
         | 
         | this video is 9 years old now, but id wager the prevalence of
         | pulbic scada and webcams et al is still pretty high.
        
         | atum47 wrote:
         | Shodan, great tool. I remember spending time looking at some
         | misconfigured IP cams
        
         | jfrunyon wrote:
         | Sadly, Shodan does not appear to index these, seemingly because
         | it attempts an HTTP connection, while the router expects an
         | HTTPS connection.
         | 
         | Edit: I take it back. Looks like the hash is good enough.
         | 47,000 results; the first three that responded are the same
         | kind of routers.
         | https://www.shodan.io/search?query=hash%3A-904286784
        
           | tg180 wrote:
           | Lately, Shodan's results are not as good as in the past. I
           | think they are scanning less aggressively.
           | 
           | I always recommend to watch at least both Censys and Shodan.
           | 
           | https://censys.io/
        
         | walrus01 wrote:
         | Some fun things here, as a google search:
         | 
         | site:.gov "for official use only" filetype:pptx
         | 
         | site:.gov "for official use only" filetype:pdf
        
         | br2 wrote:
         | Are Skydrive documents somewhat public or are people just
         | sharing them by mistake? I don't use it nor am I that familiar
         | with it.
        
           | bellyfullofbac wrote:
           | You can create a long complicated link to share with other
           | people, even people without Skydrive/OneDrive/Dropbox/Google
           | Drive accounts. But sometimes people publish these links
           | somewhere where a search engine's crawler sees it and follow
           | it.
           | 
           | I remember spotting someone's URL to a Google Doc on their
           | screen which their camera caught in their YouTube video. I
           | manually typed it into my browser's URL bar and voila, I
           | could read that document. Nothing juicy though.
        
           | eganist wrote:
           | > Are Skydrive documents somewhat public or are people just
           | sharing them by mistake? I don't use it nor am I that
           | familiar with it.
           | 
           | Almost all of this would be by mistake, no different than
           | misconfiguring an S3 bucket.
        
       | core-e wrote:
       | I don't understand. What point is being made here?
        
         | syncsynchalt wrote:
         | It's a demonstration of google dorking. Construct a google
         | search term that returns attackable hosts.
         | 
         | Skip past the first few results, then you'll see a list of
         | likely easily-hackable home routers. If you were to try
         | user/pass combos like "admin"/"admin" on these results I bet
         | you'd have successful logins on several of them.
         | 
         | Don't actually do this (seriously, the penalties aren't light),
         | the demonstration of the search results is enough to make the
         | point.
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | fungiblecog wrote:
         | People are exposing their routers to the internet. This is not
         | a good idea.
        
           | core-e wrote:
           | Thanks. How do I make sure I'm not on this list?
        
             | mixedCase wrote:
             | Easiest, most practical, 90% good enough: Get your IP
             | address, grab your phone on mobile network and go to
             | http://your.ip.address
        
               | iamcreasy wrote:
               | So, if I was exposed I will see the router's login page?
        
               | Arrath wrote:
               | If you're running their equipment, you may see your ISP
               | provided modem's login page, which ideally should have
               | whatever randomly generated password was on the sticker
               | on the bottom of the modem when you got your service. A
               | shade more secure than a router with default credentials.
        
               | kelnos wrote:
               | I'd hope you don't even see that. Your ISP shouldn't be
               | exposing that to the internet by default, either. Ideally
               | you get connection refused or an eventual timeout.
        
           | Alupis wrote:
           | There are legit reasons to have a router be publicly
           | accessible. How else would one remotely manage a router (top
           | results in Google are businesses and universities, for
           | example).
           | 
           | Since the default configuration of these routers is _not_ to
           | expose the router on the WAN interface, manually overriding
           | this configuration usually demonstrates a sufficient enough
           | understanding that the default credentials have likely also
           | been changed.
           | 
           | The only real issue would be using a default password, which
           | none of the top results shown on Google seem to have
           | (thankfully). So, little-to-no issue here.
        
             | kube-system wrote:
             | Best practice for remote management of network devices is
             | over a VPN or a remote access application designed for
             | remote management, and it has been that way for decades.
             | Web UIs on routers are designed for use on trusted
             | networks, are notoriously full of vulnerabilities, and
             | aren't typically hardened for exposure to the open
             | internet. They often do not support _any_ security features
             | beyond a password. No fail2ban, no 2FA, no SSO, etc. Most
             | router manufacturers will warn you against doing this for
             | these exact reasons, even if they don 't elaborate on why,
             | and let you do otherwise.
             | 
             | The businesses and universities you see in the list are
             | likely:
             | 
             | * a result of people hooking up rouge devices
             | 
             | * organizations operating without competent IT management
             | 
             | * honeypots
        
               | Alupis wrote:
               | Are VPN's, secondary networks, etc reasonable to expect
               | for a $100 MSRP device targeted at consumers? I think
               | not...
               | 
               | Given what it is... it's as secure as it can be. Short of
               | a 0-Day lurking somewhere, or an active CVE, the
               | configuration is fine. Not to mention all the top results
               | appear to be operated by organizations that certainly
               | know what they are doing.
        
               | kelnos wrote:
               | > _Are VPN 's, secondary networks, etc reasonable to
               | expect for a $100 MSRP device targeted at consumers?_
               | 
               | If they are, great. If not, then consumer-grade router
               | admin interfaces should not be exposed to the public
               | internet, ever.
        
               | kube-system wrote:
               | Yes, there are many consumer routers that support VPNs,
               | including the ones we're talking about here.
               | 
               | https://www.tp-link.com/us/user-
               | guides/Archer-C7/chapter-12-...
               | 
               | Although, remote management isn't much of a consumer
               | feature to begin with.
        
               | darkwater wrote:
               | If you as a consumer and
               | 
               | - spend 100 bucks on a specific router
               | 
               | - have a static IP
               | 
               | - put your router web ui on the Internet
               | 
               | then yeah, you are definitely the type who should be also
               | able to put a VPN to properly manage it. I don't really
               | get your defense of this practice. It is bad and risky,
               | and there are no good reasons to expect it to be a sane
               | config for a router.
        
             | Johnny555 wrote:
             | _manually overriding this configuration usually
             | demonstrates a sufficient enough understanding that the
             | default credentials have likely also been changed_
             | 
             | I don't think that's a reasonable assumption at all -- the
             | router should _ensure_ that the admin cred has been set to
             | a (reasonably secure) password. Just because someone read
             | on a web page that they should enable remote admin doesn 't
             | mean that they understand the risk.
             | 
             | And it should warn that exposing the admin interface to the
             | internet may make the router more vulnerable to remote
             | exploits - basically the same type warning that browsers
             | show for a bad SSL cert should be shown for insecure router
             | configs - tell the user that it's insecure and is a really
             | bad idea before they do it.
        
               | Alupis wrote:
               | How do you know this router doesn't already do that?
               | 
               | You're making some wild assumptions here.
               | 
               | Even your basic free Comcast router comes with sane
               | defaults, and tons of warnings for every configuration
               | change.
               | 
               | Here's the user manual for the TP-Link AC2300 - The
               | Archer C7 found in the google results this post links to:
               | 
               | https://static.tp-
               | link.com/2019/201912/20191231/7106508598_A...
               | 
               | Step 2 forces the default password to be changed. There
               | is no way around that step.
               | 
               | None of your assumptions are true here.
        
               | kelnos wrote:
               | > _Step 2 forces the default password to be changed.
               | There is no way around that step._
               | 
               | Sure, and you can change that password to "foobar" or
               | whatever bad password you want. And I bet that login page
               | doesn't have any rate limiting or a lockout after too
               | many failed logins.
               | 
               | Fortunately, though, I don't think there are any of these
               | that enable remote admin by default, so the owner would
               | need to do that explicitly. Hopefully they've paired that
               | with a strong password. Even then, I still wouldn't
               | advise anyone actually doing this...
               | 
               | (Your manual link is broken; it takes me to a page that
               | just links to TP-Links main marketing website.)
        
               | Johnny555 wrote:
               | Here's another TP-link manual:
               | 
               | https://www.tp-link.com/us/support/faq/66/
               | 
               | 1. Open the web browser and in the address bar type in:
               | http://192.168.1.1
               | 
               | 2. Type the username and password in the login page. They
               | are both admin by default.
               | 
               | 3. Click Security->Remote Management on the left side
               | 
               | 4. To enable this function, please change the Remote
               | Management IP address from 0.0.0.0 to a specific
               | authorized remote IP address.
               | 
               | Here's the warning they give at the bottom of the manual:
               | 
               | Few people read the entire manual, if they read it at
               | all, they read enough to do what they want, and fewer
               | still know what "Use this with caution" means. I don't
               | even know what it means. I typed 255.255.255.255
               | carefully, is that sufficient caution?
               | 
               | Type 255.255.255.255 Remote Management IP Address means
               | that you can connect to the router remotely from anywhere
               | via Internet, this is not recommended and please use it
               | with caution
               | 
               | We suggest changing the default log in Username and
               | Password if the Remote Management feature is enabled,
               | especially if you typed 255.255.255.255 as the Remote
               | Management IP address.
        
               | Alupis wrote:
               | That link isn't from the routers this post links to
               | (specifically Archer C7 and C9 routers).
               | 
               | And, your link is old, to say the least. That screenshot
               | is from the Windows XP era.
               | 
               | You're trying to lampoon TP-Link for things that simply
               | are not true anymore, nor have been for a long while.
               | 
               | I'll repeat again - the defaults on these routers is to
               | prohibit WAN access and they force a password change at
               | setup. What more are you complaining about?
        
               | Johnny555 wrote:
               | Also from the page I linked to:
               | 
               |  _Updated 04-18-2019 07:10:55 AM_
               | 
               |  _This Article Applies to: TL-WR841N (and a couple dozen
               | others)._
               | 
               | You can buy a TL-WR841N today for $20. It was released in
               | 2015, so it may be an "old" router, but old routers never
               | die, they just get cheaper.
        
               | Alupis wrote:
               | OK so what? Nothing you've stated here applies to the
               | original post. You're fabricating some outrage about
               | nothing relevant. The original post shows Archer C7 and
               | C9 routers...
        
               | Johnny555 wrote:
               | What original post? It was a google search that reveals
               | some router's remote admin page, that search doesn't
               | mention any specific router brand or model.
               | 
               | But regardless, I was responding specifically to your
               | comment:
               | 
               |  _manually overriding this configuration usually
               | demonstrates a sufficient enough understanding that the
               | default credentials have likely also been changed_
               | 
               | (That's why I quoted it in my reply)
               | 
               | And the point I was trying to make is that merely being
               | able to override the default remote admin setting does
               | not ensure that the user has any idea what the
               | ramifications are. I'm surprised you're even arguing
               | against that.
        
               | Alupis wrote:
               | > What original post? It was a google search that reveals
               | some router's remote admin page, that search doesn't
               | mention any specific router brand or model.
               | 
               | It does, click any of the links. The specific search
               | string OP used returns only C6, C7 and C9 routers (I
               | clicked through 2 pages of results).
               | 
               | You saw TP-Link and went off about things that were valid
               | to complain about in the past... but are not specifically
               | with these routers, and probably no new model TP-Link or
               | any sane manufacturer is turning out today.
               | 
               | > And the point I was trying to make is that merely being
               | able to override the default remote admin setting does
               | not ensure that the user has any idea what the
               | ramifications are
               | 
               | Again, if you actually clicked through the OP, you'd
               | notice most of the bare IP address results are dead
               | (meaning they are no longer on the internet), and the
               | ones with CNAME's attached appear to be professionally
               | managed. The assumption is sound.
        
             | larvaetron wrote:
             | > There are legit reasons to have a router be publicly
             | accessible.
             | 
             | No, there are not.
             | 
             | > How else would one remotely manage a router
             | 
             | Over a WireGuard connection to a secure management network.
             | 
             | > The only real issue would be using a default password
             | 
             | Uh, no. Try any number of CVEs or 0-days or unknown-until-
             | it's too-late vulnerabilities, depending on what web
             | daemon/frameworks are used by the router's management
             | software.
        
               | ohyeshedid wrote:
               | Even if all of that is updated and secure; with the
               | services exposed, it's less than trivial to make that
               | service eat the small amount of memory it has to work
               | with, and take down the network it manages.
        
           | csomar wrote:
           | Probably people not aware of exposing their routers to the
           | Internet.
        
         | angott wrote:
         | There are thousands of TP-LINK routers whose WAN port 80/443 is
         | exposed to the Internet, allowing access to their
         | administration interface if you know the password (or a
         | vulnerability is present).
        
           | toxicFork wrote:
           | And I'd bet a nice amount that most of them have the default
           | passwords.
           | 
           | Some years ago I wrote a little tool to iterate all of an
           | ISP's ip addresses and around 90% were using default
           | passwords. Mostly homes, but some businesses.
        
           | iamcreasy wrote:
           | I was planning to host a simple website on my RasberryPi
           | using Dynamic DNS - which I think requires me to expose port
           | 80 to the internet. Is that safe?
        
             | blacksmith_tb wrote:
             | If it's a static site? Probably safe-ish, I suppose bots
             | and bored teens could DDOS it. You could also choose a non-
             | standard port, that might cut down on the noise.
        
               | iamcreasy wrote:
               | Thanks! I want to learn what could go wrong. Can you
               | point me to any resource/book to study this particular
               | matter?
        
               | kube-system wrote:
               | It depends entirely on what technologies you are
               | specifically exposing. If you are serving a page with a
               | web server application like Nginx or Apache, you should
               | read about securing those applications. If you are
               | writing a NodeJS application, you should read something
               | specific to that.
               | 
               | If you want something very general and comprehensive, you
               | can read this, although it is probably too involved for a
               | basic "website": https://owasp.org/www-project-web-
               | security-testing-guide/sta...
        
             | willhinsa wrote:
             | If you disable the router's remote administration feature
             | and/or change the router's default administration password,
             | it should be safe.
        
             | kelnos wrote:
             | It's as safe as whatever software stack you'd be using on
             | the Raspberry Pi to serve the site, same as if you'd be
             | hosting it on a VPS in someone's cloud (though in your case
             | if there's a vulnerability of a particular kind, someone
             | could gain access to your local network).
             | 
             | Since you're not hosting the site on the router itself,
             | presumably you're forwarding port 80 from the router to the
             | Raspberry Pi, so unless the security of the Pi ends up
             | being broken, the router should be safe.
             | 
             | (Also I'd recommend using Let's Encrypt to get an
             | automatically-renewing TLS cert so you can serve https on
             | port 443 as well, and even redirect port 80 to it. It's not
             | that difficult to set up, and you'll be improving the
             | privacy and security of those who visit your site.)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | tester756 wrote:
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_hacking
        
       | Alupis wrote:
       | Click "Next Page" folks - estimated 7,000+ results turns into 21
       | results - many of which are dead, many others are HN aggregators,
       | leaving the total amount of these model routers on the public
       | internet to be a small handful - all of which appear to be
       | professionally managed with CNAMEs, etc.
       | 
       | All the outrage in this thread over nothing...
        
         | mr_sturd wrote:
         | > many of which are dead
         | 
         | They could all be receiving hugs of death from the HN traffic.
        
         | ElijahLynn wrote:
         | True claim: When I click on "next page" I get "Page 2 of about
         | 7,520 results" BUT when I click on "next page" again I do get
         | "Page 3 of about 21 results".
        
           | nicce wrote:
           | Does this mean that our beloved search engine is narcissist.
           | Overqualifying its capabilities. Or thinks that it found
           | everything useful already.
        
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