The Web: Hackers penetrate network routers

Hackers are now probing a new target -- network routers -- as they seek to wreak havoc on corporate computing networks and evade the extensive security software that has been deployed on PCs and Web servers, experts tell United Press International's The Web.

A router is a device that forwards packets of digital data over networks and is connected to at least two networks, generally local area networks, and wide area networks and the Internet. The routers are located at network gateways, where two networks connect, and have their own operating systems.

The e-mail messages one receives that are sent over the Internet contain "headers" that indicate the path that the data has taken.

"Companies need to work with their vendors and be vigilant in terms of updating their software," Bart Lazar, an intellectual-property attorney based in Chicago with the firm of Seyfarth Shaw, told The Web.

Earlier this month Cisco Systems Inc., the world's largest maker of routers, issued a public advisory about vulnerabilities to its routers a few months after the ability to hack the routers was made public at a conference of hackers, known as the "Black Hat" conference.

"The Cisco Internetwork Operating System (IOS) may permit arbitrary code execution after exploitation of a heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability. Cisco has included additional integrity checks in its software, as further described below, that are intended to reduce the likelihood of arbitrary code execution," said a statement from Cisco.

This router operating system is present in about 80 percent of corporate computing networks.

Attacking routers -- rather than the Internet service provider or a LAN or WAN -- has been, traditionally, difficult, experts said.

"Traditionally, routers have been relatively impenetrable," Ted Demopoulos, IT expert and co-author of the forthcoming book, "Blogging for Business" (Dearborn Trade Publishing, February 2006), told The Web. "They are simpler than operating systems and hence less likely to contain bugs and resulting security flaws. More simple equals more secure."

Another reason that routers have been impervious to attacks in the past is that hackers have known relatively little about them. "The average hacker knows far more about Windows or Unix than routers," said Demopoulos. "It's hard to hack things you don't understand."

That's changing, now, however. Hacking was once a phenomenon powered by pranksters who were looking for some fun at other people's expense.