A group of ethical hackers has warned that the BT Home Hub, the wireless router provided to BT Broadband customers, can easily be hacked if left to operate using its default settings.

GNUCitizen.org said that it had been reverse-engineering the BT Home Hub, which is made by a firm called Thomson, with independent security researcher Kevin Devine and found that algorithms used by the device were predictable enough for hackers to be able to crack.

Two standards of wireless encryption, WEP (wired equivalent privacy) and WPA (Wi-Fi protected access), have been used over the years and concerns about the security of the older standard, WEP, appear to be confirmed by GNUCitizen's findings.

"It's quite likely that the bad guys can break into your network if you're using the default encryption key. Our advice is: use WPA rather than WEP and change the default encryption key now," GNUCitizen said.

BT said in a statement: "It's important to realise that although it has been possible to demonstrate a scenario where the hub may be vulnerable, we don't believe it is something that should affect the majority of BT customers in real life."

"It is not only BT that has been affected by this, it is an issue for many operators that use Thomson routers," the statement continued.

BT has also published details about how to secure your Home Hub and how to enable WPA encryption on your wireless router.

Another problem insecure wireless networks can lead to is people "piggybacking" your connection, potentially downloading illegal material that can be traced to your broadband account.

This could lead to you being cut off from your ISP if new rules proposed by the music industry are implemented.

http://tinyurl.com/4dgrw4
www.gnucitizen.org

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