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Homehub 3

High everyone. I'm a newbie so be gentle with me.

I'm a recent Infinity customer and have had excellent service disregarding customer support. When i upgraded to Infinity i also took possession of the Homehub 3. I plan to keep the router because I'm Weird and like the idea of letting people piggyback off my Homehub and gain the ability to piggyback off others. I kind of like free countrywide Internet access. There is one feature though that has me worried, port 161. When i found my router had port 161 open and responsive to scans and no way to close the thing i did what every else would do, i googled it. I was kind of shocked when i found out that this security flaw was foolishly built into every Homehub 3.

As BT have stupidly opened this port i no longer have the ability to stealth my presence on the web like i could with every single BT router i have used in the past. As this port sings its head off when scanned there is a chance i'm going to get some £$$%^&* hacker try their luck.

As a six year old has taken charge of broadband security at BT i need a little advice. Is there anything else i can do to defend my router? With my router singing its head off and me having a permanent connection its not if that £$$%^&* hacker tries their luck, but when.
 
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Use a software firewall such as ZoneAlarm (Free version), and keep your network connection in the "Untrusted/Public" zone??
 
That protects the computer, my problem is the flawed security in the router. How do i stop someone altering the settings? The problem when i get noticed by a hacker is the router, it can cause a major headache if they do get into it
 
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You could always ditch the homehub and buy a decent router, then maybe set the homehub up as a wifi access point.

I can only suggest, I havent actually seen the new homehub, but I am certain that someone has already rooted it somewhere!!!!
 
You could try forwarding the port 161 traffic to another port that's closed (not sure if this is viable on the HH3) or perhaps plugging in a second router with a stricter firewall to protect your computer network. Many ISPs that sell self-branded routers, such as Sky, BT, O2 and Virgin Media etc. will leave some allowance for remote firewall updates / management and that's what 161 is for with BT.

Such ports are not usually susceptible to normal attacks, unless of course somebody were to steal vital code from BT that would make such an assault easy. However do make sure that your router is using a custom password and not a default one.
 
Problems

One major problem with all HH3's having the same port open is a hacker now only have to scan the BT address range for one port. Scanning a range of ports and my firewall will pick it up as an attack and block them for a year, scan only one and the firewall might not. The open port is the hackers light in the window. Once they see it the port will have done its job and need not be touched again, not with another 65535 service ports to play with. When that person moves on, whether they succeed or not, that light will bring in the next one, and the next, and so on.
 
BT have more than one port open in in the Homehub 3. As well as port 161 BT have also locked open port 4567 in all Homehub 3's


No wonder it's free
 
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Eureaka.

I found this little gem that stealths both open ports. It stealthed my Homehub bigtime.

i've recently moved and with bt being the fastest isp at my current address, found myself on BT. after running GRC's tests & seeing port 161 open, found this thread searching on 'bt home hub 3 port 161 open'.
after reading the above, i agree bt's reasons for leaving the port open and vulnerable are questionable.
i therefore went into the hub manager, went to port forwarding in the advanced settings, added a new supported application, named it snmp, on port 161. went back to the port fwd. config, added a snmp item to fwd to ip 192.168.1.111 (which does not exist on my network), applied it & re-tested with grc. all ports now show as stealthed.


Do it with port 4567 as well and you have a fully stealthed router

Source
http://community.bt.com/t5/BB-Speed-Connection-Issues/port-161-open-on-home-hub-3/m-p/304585/highlight/false#M99961
 
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