Home consumers need not worry about the impact of the Heartbleed vulnerability affecting their home routers, says security researchers at TripWire. This is because the vulnerable components of most home routers are not accessible to remote attackers by default, referring to their remote management feature that is typically disabled. Moreover, most people also don't log into their routers on a regular enough basis to make it a realistic vector, says the security firm.
The severity of the Heartbleed vulnerability had been widely reported in the last few weeks, and the problem was exacerbated by the widespread use of the popular open-source OpenSSL library. Affected servers and appliances could be subject to memory leakage that can result in passwords, private SSL keys and session tokens being stolen by remote hackers.
But while Heartbleed probably isn't a major concern, TripIt cautioned that home users are not out in the woods either. Security researcher Craig Young pointed to the existence of other security flaws that afflict most home routers. In that context, he noted that "the risk added by Heartbleed is negligible in comparison to serious risks associated with the many other critical security flaws that are endemic to SOHO routers."
The Fierce Take: To keep the IT budget down, some enterprises may be tempted to deploy consumer-grade Internet routers branch offices. Moreover, workers may work from vulnerable home networks, or even deploy unauthorized Wi-Fi access points using home routers with wireless capabilities. The latter may allow a hacker to break into the corporate network via a conduit that is not hardened or otherwise monitored.
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