The popular router company left its users shocked when researchers
discovered a crucial vulnerability with its Wi-Fi extenders.
The vulnerability immensely compromised the extender to the
hacker and let them have entire control of the device.
Victim’s traffic could easily be redirected via the taking
over of the extender and could lead them to malware, the researchers cited.
To enhance the range of the Wi-Fi signals these extenders
are used to “extend” the range. They provide a significant boot in the signal’s
strength.
Security cameras, doorbells and other security equipment
could easily be connected via the extender to the router.
But quite like the routers they are prone to vulnerabilities
and need to be maintained and patched from time to time to ensure a safe
network.
Allegedly, the particular extenders that were affected were
the RE365, the RE350, the RE650 and the RE500.
According to sources, the researchers who were behind the
digging up of this glitch belong to IBM’s X-Force of researchers.
Ever since then IBM
collectively with TP-Link has released updates for the affected users.
The to-be attackers don’t necessarily need to be within the
range of the Wi-Fi extender for him to exploit the weakness.
The attacks procedure begins with the hacker sending a
malicious HTTP request to the Wi-Fi extender.
The vulnerability in
turn aids the attacker to execute such commands form the request which is not
the case with proper extenders which have limited access.
The attacker would need to know the extender’s IP address to
abuse the vulnerability. Thousands of exposed devices could be easily found on “Shodan”
and similar search engines.
The misuse of the vulnerability is not only limited to
malicious code execution or simple taking control of the extender.
More sophisticated malicious activity could also be followed
through using shell commands on the device’s operating system, sources cited.
Also creating a botnet out of the extender and redirecting
the users to malicious pages are other things on the list of probable attacks.