D-Link Router Malware in the Wild (again)

[Ed P]

If you have a D-Link router you may want to consider not using On-Line Banking!

link

You may also want to research the historical records of D-Link vulnerabilities.

[The Duke]

Or just use mobile data.

[Richard]

The Duke wrote:

Or just use mobile data.

As long as you are not using your own or anyone else’s Wi Fi as they would have been affected by the same issue. Though using anyone else’s Wi Fi does carry its own risks. The exploit does appear to be US or North/South America based and at least the article did offer ways of self managing the router to mitigate your risk profile.

[The Duke]

The only wifi I’d use to do anything remotely financial, is my own home wifi. I always use mobile data when out the house for banking and buying. Mobile data is rather secure. WiFi is a crap shoot.

[Richard]

It might also be a sound idea to avoid doing banking or anything else of an otherwise restricted nature using a ZTE mobile according to recent news reports.

[The Duke]

ZTE is fine, as is the other Chinese brands. I really wound give it any thought. If your bank has an app that is supported on your device. You have nothing to worry about. Even if you only use the browser to bank I wouldn’t worry.

The banks bend over backwards to fix issues fast. Over the years I’ve had 4 or 5 Halifax issues, the largest was 600£, over two days of cash withdrawals. Even then, I had the money back in my account within in a 15 to 20 min call. All varifide before the call was ended.

Now, a couple of months ago I got a Monzo card to talk away (recommend it so much) .however when I was testing it, on a Sunday night at 10.30pm,all I wanted was cash back (30)for my girls school trip. I went in my local One Stop, and as usual their link machine wasn’t working, so I opted for cash back.

Now I bought a bottle of pop for a pound and 30 cash back, now when I used the card (chip and pin), tje one stop machine bounced the card, but the accompanying Monzo app come thorough as approved. So the £31 vanished out the account, but as it was declined shop side, all the shop could do was give me all the receipts, and write me a quick account of what happened, in the shop log book, and a copy for me. And asked me to come back the following afternoon to speak to a manager.

Once home, I opened the monzo app, and on the transaction, there is a button to raise a dispute. So I did, within 2 mins I had a live person on chat, I explained my issue, he asked for the declined receipts, then just sent me the money back, and a bit of compo (a tenner). All this was around 12am Sunday night Monday morning.

It wasnt a lot of money, but to get service and it sorted midnight Sunday impressed me a lot.

Given it was the first or second time I used the card, it did make we worry about using this while out out the country, so I battered the card over the next two weeks, and used it solely since I’ve been away. It’s extremely good.

I’ll be moving my daily needs to the card when I’m home, it makes the Halifax and HSBC set ups look ancient, and they are hard work in comparison. Can’t speak highly enough about the service and the app.

It started a few years ago as a pre paid holiday card, but now is a fully (or almost) featured bank. Even gives you interest, but only on your saving pots, and not on your day to day account. Which isn’t an issue for me.

[Richard]

You have just proved and old industry saying, ‘Good service after a bad experience can win customers’. That was a reassuring experience. I am going to suspect that you deal with only one account/set of accounts with one user, if so I guess you can be the sole agent. That does make things easier from the on line point of view.

I was trying to count up the number of accounts and cards we jointly use. It looks like seven main accounts with joint cards for my wife and myself. The spread is partially historic and partially in order to introduce redundancy. If one fails other options exist. Two service suppliers have gone so four cards less. We could probably do things another way, but monthly ‘balance day’ flushes everything into one lovely paper chase. Receipts for ‘capital’ type items are filed centrally and the others shredded and composted. Its worked for us for just shy of 40 odd years, (no credit cards back then; or home computers), we just had merchant credit accounts, plus a couple more banks – in different countries.

[The Duke]

You have one main account, but you can open many sub accounts, they call them pots.

I have one pot that rounds up evey payment to the next pound and drops it in the pot. Over the last 3 weeks away I’ve managed to save the best part of 150 with out noticing it.

I could pull it out and back in the main account. But I’ve decided to just let it run, and I’ll see if I can pay for my trip to Madrid next may out of it.

You can also if you wish log into the account from a browser or any mobile phone. Only one log in at a time though. So you can share the accounts if you wish. Though me and trh wife have very seperate money. We have a running The house account, savings, then our own accounts for spending our allowances etc. At the end of each two moth period, I skim off any ectra out of the bill account into our savings. I like to have all my money (not much of it) all ordered and in separate accounts. The bill account always takes president, then a proportion to the savings, and then out allowances. Then any extra gets put away once I notice the ‘float’ in the bill account has grown.

The wife isn’t very tech savvy so she isn’t interested in the Monzo account, if something works, she isn’t interested in learning new ways. but two of my kids already have set them up (well one, and the other is in the process ), and moving money to them is very simple.

Re finding out what a company is about, can only happen when they mess up, and how they deal with it. It’s why I happily pay Amazon each year. Nothing is ever an issue. The customer always seems to be right.

[Ed P]

Steve, just to correct an apparent misconception, the DLink issue is not caused by wifi, the problem is in the general insecurity of DLink kit allowing a thief to access your router and change the stored default DNS cache, or even the DNS server address. ( The hosts file on your PC is a good example of a DNS cache)

Although obviously a mobile uses wifi to access the router, a wired pc is equally affected.

[The Duke]

Yes Ed. Is it related to the issue the US gov sent out a msg to all citizens to reboot their Routers about 6 weeks ago. I’ve been away so never kept up with the story.

But at the time, I wad watching security now with Steve Gibson, and he was confused but the advice of the US gov. Mostly cos it doesn’t usally give out advice to normal folk anyway.

He said if I recall, there has to be something more to whatever the issue was. As just out of the blue, the give asked it’s peeps to reboot Routers. So he summerised somthing must be wrong, and well soon hear more about it. As if its something serious enough for the give to send out an all hand msg, it’s more than likely a simple ‘reboot’ would not surfice.

He guessed, that he thought this would be some type of attack that hid on the cashe and could survive a reboot. And that was with him having next to no info on the issue.

[Richard]

@EdP, I thought that your originally posted the link made the whole thing pretty clear. Not just the primary targets of the link, but the way to combat the effects.

There is always the issue of ensuring that routers are correctly hardened within the limits of a user’s capability – change the default password is always a good place to start. Always make the password as hard to guess as you can. Most times software updates are put out for a good set of reasons and should be installed when, (if?) available.

[Author]

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