You probably heard those horror stories where someone’s camera inside their home was hacked, or their laptop compromised, leading to the theft of online account credentials and credit card details. Though these scenarios appear like something out of a spy movie and are indeed rare, they may happen. The good news is that securing your home network is much simpler than you might think.
4 main attack types
When we talk about the ways your home network can be attacked, it’s like thinking about how burglars could get into your house. But instead of physical locks and windows, we’re dealing with digital entry points. Here’s a breakdown of the four main types of attacks, from remote attacks to local and physical ones:
1) Social engineering and phishing attacks
This is like someone pretending to be a delivery person to trick you into opening your door. Phishing happens when you receive a fake email or message that looks real, asking you to provide personal information or click on a link. The goal is to trick you into giving away sensitive information or installing a virus/malware on your device. 34% of internet crimes reported to the FBI in 2023 were phishing. “Human hacking” is the biggest threat to your digital security, by far.
2) Vulnerable public devices
Imagine your home’s address is visible to anyone on the planet; that’s what your public IP address is on the internet. It’s a unique address that identifies your home network online. Malicious people know your address and they might try to find a way in. In most cases, your internet box/router, which connects your home network to the internet, is the only device that can be accessed publicly. It is the front door. If it’s not secured, someone could break in. If a hacker takes over your router, you’re screwed. Fortunately, home routers are relatively easy to secure (see below).
3) Wi-Fi hacking
Imagine if someone standing outside your house could listen to every conversation you have inside. Wi-Fi attacks are somewhat similar. Someone nearby could “listen” to the data sent over your Wi-Fi, guess or brute-force your Wi-Fi password and then penetrate your home network. That said, even if somebody guesses your Wi-Fi password, they probably won’t be able to do much harm if you only have “vanilla” desktops, laptops and printers at home (it’s hard to penetrate standard workstations). Still, hackers could launch external attacks from within your network and your IP address would show up in the logs which is not good. A very sophisticated attack would be to spoof your router by creating a fake Wi-Fi network with the same name and encryption settings as your real network. This could deceive your devices into connecting to the fraudulent network instead of the legitimate one, allowing attackers to intercept and manipulate your internet traffic. All those Wi-Fi attacks require the attacker to be nearby, so it remains unlikely unless you’re deliberately targeted.
4) Physical compromise
This is the digital equivalent of someone breaking into your house and either stealing your personal diaries or installing microphones under your table. If someone gets physical access to your computers and hard drives, they could steal them to get your information or install a keylogger, which records every key you press on your keyboard, including your passwords. This type of attack is very unlikely unless you’re deliberately targeted for some reason.
Key protection measures
To safeguard your home network and significantly reduce the risk of these attacks, there are 3 essential steps you should take:
1) Change the default password on your router. Default passwords are known. Use a custom strong password instead.
2) Verify that all the router’s ports are closed by checking the router’s firewall settings and using port scanners to confirm no vulnerable port is open.
3) Ensure your Wi-Fi password is strong and unique to prevent unauthorized access to your network.
If you do that, then you’re already quite safe.
We can run those basic security tests for you, to verify that your home network is safe. If we identify any security vulnerability, we’ll provide easy and concrete steps to remediate those issues.
By following these simple steps, you will significantly fortify your home network against most threats. The only thing left is to protect yourself against phishing by using ad blockers and being cautious about the links you click and the information you provide online. This is the biggest threat. More concrete recommendations are provided in this article.