is my router hacked?
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Hello, i'm new here. I'm suspecting someone hacked the modem/router, because i saw 5 connected devices in my router, but there are only 4 devices in my house, at first i thought it could be just a glitch, maybe one is duplicated, But i looked at the mac adresses and they're different. now its back to 4. should i worry or not? and what i can do to prevent this from happening ever again.
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Hello mino538,
Philbert makes some really good points! If the issue is still eating at you, I suggest you factory reset the device. Ensure you select WPA2-PSK as the security version. Make the admin and WiFi passwords at least 20 characters long. Use a password manager to manage your passwords. Don't re-use passwords anywhere. Computer power nowadays means that an eight character password can be cracked in three hours. I hope this helps you put the thought of being hacked behind you! Mike
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Do you have any Apple Devices running IOS14 or higher?
If so they have a setting by default that it randomly changes the MAC address of the device when connected to WiFi networks, means this will temporarily appear as a 2nd / 3rd / 4th device on the network with different MAC addresses. We disable this feature as it causes all sorts of issues for wireless controllers
Its also available on Android 10+ but believe its OFF by default, certainly not as prevalent an issue for android.
More info here
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT211227
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@Philbert i don't, we have only Android and 2 laptops, win10, and win8
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What version of Android are the devices? If you have the MAC address written down or recorded we could trace the vendor and might tell you more
I would say its unlikely anything to worry about..
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Hello mino538,
Philbert makes some really good points! If the issue is still eating at you, I suggest you factory reset the device. Ensure you select WPA2-PSK as the security version. Make the admin and WiFi passwords at least 20 characters long. Use a password manager to manage your passwords. Don't re-use passwords anywhere. Computer power nowadays means that an eight character password can be cracked in three hours. I hope this helps you put the thought of being hacked behind you! Mike
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@Philbert unfortunately i didn't write it, but it didn't occur again, so i just forgot about it, however i still had some doubts.
thanks for the help anyway
Edit: Android version is 7
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@MikeFdes thanks for the tips, but i have a question what about the router interface password? it usually has a very weak password, like admin or something like that i changed it something a little bit harder but with only 5 characters. is it good?
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@mino538 That password is weak by modern computing standards. That number of characters takes about three seconds to crack. I would change both the router interface password and the WiFi password to something between fifteen and twenty characters long.
https://bitwarden.com/password-generator/
That link above is to a password generator. Use that to set a stronger password. Start using a password generator to store these passwords. That'll also ensure you don't reuse any passwords.
Mike
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