That Airbnb’s Wi-Fi could be Used to Hijack your Laptop or Phone

Do you rent out your property to travelers using Airbnb? Are you a customer? If you are, then stand the risk of being hacked, especially if there is a Wi-Fi router in your rental unit. Very few homeowners tend to keep their wireless routers locked and bolted. If they do not, then any tenant can get access to their routers and modify its settings with possibly disastrous results.

How easy is it?

If an attacker can get access to your hardware, you end up having no network security. One of the researchers with Atlassian realized how apparent the danger is during a ski trip to Colorado. He took a break from the slopes to prank his friends by tweaking the Wi-Fi router of their Airbnb rental so that he could redirect their traffic to a different location. While he hoped that it would take him a few hours, he was surprised to find that he could just pick up their router and turn it over. At the Black Hat conference, he told the audience that it took him no more than five minutes.

Security experts are well aware of the fact that most of the Wi-Fi routers have bad security, given the fact that most of them never change their administrator name and password. However, even if the credentials of the admin are changed, there is a handy backdoor, the reset button that can be activated with a pen or a paperclip.

A paperclip is often all it takes to wipe out a whole layer of security. Even a kid can reprogram the Wi-Fi router in a rental unit to enable remote administrative capabilities, change the network password or name, block websites, turn on parental control or change the DNS settings so that your router gets the information about the web address from a malicious source.

How dangerous is it and what can you do to avoid it?

A malicious DNS server, for instance, can send you to a page that looks like Gmail but is not when you try to log into your inbox. It will capture your username and password and then send you to the real Gmail page without arousing the slightest suspicion. To avoid getting into trouble, put your router in a locked room or a closet or better yet, put it in an electronic enclosure, which is a locked box that is transparent to radio signals. You should also periodically reset your router to clear out anything that has accumulated.