The Practice of Network Security: Deployment Strategies for Production Environments

Chapter 4. Routing

Router security has traditionally been of little concern to network administrators. Routers, for the most part, simply run. They forward packets across the WAN and do not usually cause, or exacerbate, security problems.

That thinking has changed a lot over the last few years. As attackers become more network savvy, they realize that routers often make excellent targets. This is especially true for small companies that do not have dedicated network support staff. Often default router access passwords are left in place, or default SNMP passwords are unchanged. Even if a password is changed, many administrators will continue to telnet to the router, leaving their login and password information available to anyone with a sniffer. ...