Practice
KYLE RANKIN
Hacking on Your
Home Router
Why hack someone else when an ideal target might be lurking
in your own network?
Although it’s true that I tend to focus
mostly on Linux in systems administration
(after all, that is my day job), I’ve always had
a secondary interest in security, whether it’s
hardening systems, performing forensics
on a hacked system, getting root on a pico
projector or even trying my hand at finding
and exploiting vulnerabilities. Even though
it’s fun to set up your own Web services and
attempt to exploit them, there’s something
more satisfying about finding vulnerabilities
in someone else’s code. The downside,
of course, is that most Webmasters don’t
appreciate it when you break into their sites.
However fun hacking is, at least for me, it
isn’t worth the risk of jail time, so I need to
have my fun in more legal ways. This is where
my wireless router comes in.
Wireless routers have a long history of
being hackable. If you take any group of
Linux geeks, you are bound to find a number
of them who have, or have had, a member
of the classic Linksys WRT series. If you look
on-line, there are all sorts of custom firmware
you can install to extend its functionality.
Although it’s true that on some versions of
the router you have to jump through some
crazy hoops to install custom firmware, it’s still
not the same kind of challenge as discovering
and exploiting a vulnerability on a server.
Although I have a stack of WRT54G routers,
this article isn’t about them; instead, it’s about
the D-Link DIR-685.
The D-Link DIR-685
I first became aware of the D-Link DIR-685
during a Woot-Off on woot.com. If you are
familiar with Woot-Offs, you understand that
when a new product shows up on the site,
you have a limited time to decide whether
you want to buy it before it disappears and
a new product shows up. The moment I
read the specs, I knew this router looked
promising. First, it was an 802.11n router,
