Hackers hijack 300, 000-plus wireless routers, make malicious changes | Ars Technica

Tue Mar 4 21:24:32 UTC 2014

On 04/03/14 10:33, Ian McDonald wrote:
> Until the average user's cpe is only permitted to use the resolvers one
> has provided as the provider (or otherwise decided are OK), this is
> going to be a game of whackamole. So long as there's an 'I have a clue'
> opt out, it appears to be the way forward to resolve this issue.
> Shutting down one set of 'bad resolvers' will simply cause a new set to
> be spawned, and a reinfection run round the still-unpatched cpe's of the
> world.

Hi.

That's a method for just temporarily managing the situation, not fixing it.

If a techie opts-out, it doesn't mean other non tech-savvy users behind
the same CPE won't go to a bad website and infect the vulnerable CPE.
Once in this situation, it is *very* difficult The clueful user to find out.

Most operators don't have an opt-out for SOHO services or it's a pain in
the $BODYPART because of the dynamic nature of the SOHO services and the
proper static identification of each user among the mass of not
tech-savvy users. I've been through that as a user.

The root of the problem is an unpatched CPE, that's right. The ISP is
responsible for fixing that in pretty much all its own SOHO networks.
It all boils down to finding the affected users and patching the CPEs.
That has the additional benefit of involving the upstream CPE vendor.

Best regards.