Warning: Found out my old router from 2018 was still using WEP encryption last night

I was cleaning out some old tech gear in my basement in Newark and decided to check an old Linksys router I had sitting in a box. I plugged it in just for kicks and saw it was still set to WEP. I had no idea that was even still supported. I looked it up and apparently WEP can be cracked in under 5 minutes with free software. Makes me wonder how many people have these old things still running. Has anyone else checked their older devices lately?

2 comments

2 Comments

elliot_king27d ago

Oh man, actually I think the default password thing might be a separate issue from WEP. Like the password being "admin" is bad too but WEP is a whole different level of bad since it's the encryption method itself that's broken, not just the password. But yeah, totally get the panic when you realize how easy it is to crack that stuff open.

wren_brown28d ago

Oh man, "WEP can be cracked in under 5 minutes" really hit home because I did something almost as dumb last year. I had this old router from like 2015 still running in my garage for my smart bulbs and realized I never changed it from the default password. The password was literally "admin" and the encryption was set to WEP too. I remember watching a YouTube video where a guy cracked WEP in 60 seconds with a laptop and a cup of coffee and I felt like the biggest idiot alive. I guess I figured since nobody was trying to hack my garage lights I was fine, but that's not how security works obviously. It took me like two whole hours to update the firmware and switch it to WPA2 because I kept messing up the settings. So yeah, I totally feel you on this one.