Internet Vulnerability Scans Rise, Leaving Outdated Routers at Higher Risk

Even if we are casual internet users, our router is still being scanned for vulnerabilities. Most of the scans are harmless and get blocked by basic firewalls, but outdated or poorly secured routers can still be exploited. Oren Koren, the co-founder and CPO of Veriti, says that tools like Censys and Shodan scan the internet to find any exposed devices, ports or systems. Even though most scans happen routinely, some scans can be dangerous as attackers can probe the network and search for weak points and vulnerabilities. The scans are of four types: mapping tools, targeted attacks, spray and pray, and organizational tools.

Chief Product Officer at ThreatLocker, Rob Allen, says that everyone should be concerned with internet scans, but they should be more concerned about modern firewalls blocking low-level attacks than port scanning. Attackers mostly scan for vulnerable ports like Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) from which unpatched devices and leaked credentials can be exploited. Many of the attackers have accessed devices without authentication by using crafted HTTP requests. Most of the unpatched and older routers are more at risk and even if your security features are in place, zero-day vulnerabilities can still lead to breaches.

Most users ask whether being attacked reduces their internet speed and the answer is no. But attackers can launch a denial of service (DoS) attack which acts like a traffic jam. But DoS is rare and home users are not vulnerable to it because they can easily change their IP address. F5 Labs reports that network scanning activity has increased by 94% last year and this trend is likely to gain momentum. Organizations are being scanned more than 40 million times a month, which shows that higher-value targets face more probes. To keep yourselves safe from port scanning, make sure your firewalls are enabled and all firmware is updated.

Image: DIW-Aigen

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World