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TIL that In 2018, A hacker broke into people’s routers (100,000 of them) and patched their vulnerabilities up so that they couldn’t be abused by other hackers.

www.zdnet.com A mysterious grey-hat is patching people's outdated MikroTik routers

Internet vigilante claims he patched over 100,000 MikroTik routers already.

A mysterious grey-hat is patching people's outdated MikroTik routers

Internet vigilante claims he patched over 100,000 MikroTik routers already.

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[HN] A mysterious grey-hat is patching people's outdated MikroTik routers (2018)

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  • Pretty decent thing to do. When I was a website developer, around 2012 I dealt with a mentally unstable friend/client who one day started seeing porn ads on a blog that he asked me to fix up on behalf of someone else. He freaked out "NICK CAN'T SEE THAT, OMG". I looked at the site on 4 different devices from 3 IP addresses and didn't see what he was talking about. Since it was my job to figure this out, I asked some people we knew on a forum "will you please look at this site and let me know if you see any porn ads?" 25 people responded that no, they did not. Okay. So I told him, hey, I had everyone on our forum check it out and it's fine, so it has to be a virus on your computer or something. He got super angry and told me it was VERY embarrassing to him that I did that (like, wtf was I supposed to do?). Eventually someone figured out he had a hacked router.

    • I worked with a client where their router got hacked, but the site manager insisted that it wasn't, because he had an "unhackable" Macbook. Like, no, buddy. No. Every Windows 98 client, the Windows NT 4.0 server, and your router are totally, totally hacked, and pointing to Chinese DNS. "UHHH NOOO?? IT's a MAAAAAC! Hello? Anyone in there, Windows guy? I HAVE A MACBOOK!" With a patronizing chuckle. Then he mocked deaf people accents to re-explain, I guess, to make the point I was retarded.

      Thankfully, his boss fired him on the spot. This was the THIRD time I was sent out there to wipe and reinstall, and my attendance of his firing was a mere formality. He was being hacked by an open Apple AirPort Base Station with no password or encryption that was inside the network, and refused to believe it because it was an Apple product. His boss understood, though.

      Note: this is not meant to mock or deride any Apple product or fans thereof. Just this specific dweeb.

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