[Discuss] Router security alert

[Adam Parkin]

Patrick wrote:
> But I wonder if it was kinda sorta semi-safe already [not that
> I'd want to find out first-hand, of course].  The router is only
> for LAN connections because I'm on dialup, and has a non-standard
> IP, left-over from when WinXP shared its dialup connection across
> the LAN [wanted 192.168.0.1 all to itself for that, so I let it
> have that and gave the router a different one].  I'm not sure if

That sounds an awful lot like security by obscurity to me.... :p  Having 
said that, there's a number of options I've enabled on my router/WAP 
that won't stop a knowledgeable cracker, but can discourage the "casual" 
malicious user (for example things like not broadcasting the SSID, MAC 
filtering, disabling DHCP and instead assigning IP's manually, etc) 
which is really the same idea of security by obscurity.

 > this setup will let it respond by name, or if it even has an
 > internal domain name [like http://D.link/ or whatever].

If memory serves, my D-Link router (different model than yours) allows 
you to set a domain name for the router and you could type that into a 
browser to get access to the router (instead of using the router's IP 
address).  I could be wrong about that though as I never really looked 
into it (I just have 192.168.0.1 permanently engraved into my brain).

And of course since you can enter anything you want as the domain name 
it's obviously only valid on the LAN side of the router.

> Oh well.  Better safe than pwned.

Exactly.  You really can never be too careful when it comes to network 
security.
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Adam Parkin
E-mail: pzelnip at gmail.com
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