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Most people probably aren’t thinking about their home router as a vulnerability point for hackers and attackers, but it’s actually one of the easier things for an attacker to hijack.
With access to your router, an attacker can see everything that is happening on your network, and capture all sorts of sensitive and personal information. They can also use these compromised routers to create “residential proxy” networks, which are used to route malicious traffic through to make it appear more "legitimate” when conducting attacks. A residential IP address is less risky than a random server in Russia for companies trying to determine if traffic hitting their website or app is “legitimate or not”.
Some simple steps you can do to protect yourself:
Restart your router once a week. This clears out malware that might be living in short-term memory (a common tactic).
Make sure you keep your router firmware up to date (turn on auto-update in your router settings if available).
If you router is 5 years old or older, think about replacing it since old routers are probably not being patched anymore.
Check out more tips, including a reminder to update your DNS settings to a privacy-forward approach in my post on this topic below.
