~Govind Rammurthy, CEO & Managing Director, eScan~
Home Wi-Fi routers have become one of the most vulnerable entry points for cybercriminals. This is not a hypothetical scenario, but a statistical reality. Security researchers regularly discover botnets comprising millions of home routers, webcams, and smart TVs spread across hundreds of countries, including significant concentrations in India. The attack vector is default passwords like “admin/admin” or easily guessable variants such as “admin123.”
These are not sophisticated exploits requiring zero-day vulnerabilities. These are devices sitting in homes and small offices, shipped with factory default credentials that nobody bothered to change. The manufacturer set the password to “admin” for convenience during setup, expecting users to change it. Most users simply never do.
The Current Reality: Routers as DDoS Foot Soldiers
In 2025, these compromised device armies were used primarily for DDoS attacks that bombarded targets with packet-traffic until they collapsed. The technique was straightforward. Attackers used TCP/UDP hole punching to weaponize routers, turning them into traffic-generating nodes. Each router blindly sent packets to a target IP address – massive, blunt, and effective.
When investigators traced these attacks, they hit a dead end. The traffic came from a residential IP address in Jaipur or Kochi or Hyderabad. They found Mrs. Sharma’s home router, still blinking innocently with its factory default password. She was not a cybercriminal – she was a cybermule. Her router served as the front-end of the attack. The actual perpetrator orchestrated everything from elsewhere, using her device as a proxy. When investigators arrived, Mrs. Sharma was confused, defensive, and ultimately cleared. The real attacker was long gone.
This mirrors exactly how financial fraud mules operate. A scammer never receives stolen money directly. They trick or recruit a mule to receive the funds, keep a small percentage, withdraw the rest as cash, and hand it over. When law enforcement investigates, they catch the mule. The real perpetrator vanishes. The mule takes the blame for a crime they barely understood.
Home routers are the digital equivalent. They are the fall guys, the patsies, the ones holding the bag when investigators come knocking.
2026: When Routers Stop Being Dumb Mules
Current attacks use routers as simple packet-sending machines because that is easy to accomplish remotely with no code injection required. Attackers rely on UDP and TCP manipulation& weak passwords. The new concern for 2026 is the evolving ability of attackers to inject code into these routers and transform them from simple traffic generators into sophisticated attack platforms.
Historically, this was difficult. Code injection into routers required identifying the specific model and firmware version, finding exploitable vulnerabilities for that exact configuration, crafting functional exploits, and deploying them successfully without bricking the device. This required expertise, time, and effort – too much work for most attackers when basic DDoS capabilities were sufficient.
AI-powered automation changes everything.
The 2026 Threat Scenario
An AI-driven attack tool connects to a compromised router and, within seconds, it:
- Fingerprints the device: manufacturer, model, firmware version, and configuration
- Queries vulnerability databases and exploit repositories for known weaknesses
- Searches the dark web and hacker forums for proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits
- Tests multiple code injection techniques automatically
- Deploys working malware tailored to that specific device
- Moves to the next router and repeats
What took a skilled attacker hours or days in 2025 takes an AI-powered tool minutes in 2026. At scale, the impact becomes immense. Run this automation across millions of exposed IP addresses and attackers are no longer compromising routers for DDoS alone. They are building a distributed attack infrastructure with real computational capabilities.
This shift from simple packet-flooding to sophisticated code injection fundamentally changes what’s at risk.
What Becomes Possible
Once attackers can inject code at scale, the threat landscape transforms:
Network-Level Attacks
Man-in-the-middle attacks become trivial: A compromised router can intercept and modify all traffic flowing through it. During an online banking session, the router can inject fake transaction confirmations, redirect payment destinations, or steal authentication tokens while showing the user exactly what they expect to see on screen.
Beyond interception, compromised routers enable credential harvesting at the source: Every password, login session, and API key passing through the router can be captured. This affects not just the home user, but anyone who connects to the Wi-Fi. A client visiting a small business office may unknowingly transmit corporate VPN credentials through a compromised router.
Device-Level Compromise
The router also serves as a pivot point for lateral movement inside home networks: The router becomes a persistent foothold. From there, attackers can compromise laptops, smartphones, IoT devices, and home security systems. A doorbell camera becomes surveillance for threat actors. A smart TV records your video calls.
Business Impact
Small business exposure becomes catastrophic: Consider a neighborhood accounting firm with five employees relying on a single router. Once compromised with injected malware, attackers gain persistent access to client financial records, tax returns, and banking credentials. Medical clinics, small factories, and design studios face similar risks.
Work-from-home becomes work-from-compromised: In today’s hybrid work environment, millions of employees rely on home routers. A compromised router remains a persistent threat even with VPN usage. It can harvest credentials before the VPN connects, capture tokens when the VPN drops, serve fake login portals, or – most dangerously – compromise the laptop itself. Once the endpoint is compromised, the attacker can use the employee’s legitimate VPN connection to access corporate networks, appearing as authorized traffic from a trusted device.
This is not theoretical. Ransomware investigations increasingly identify compromised home infrastructure as an initial access vector, particularly as remote/hybrid work becomes permanent. The M&S ransomware case revealed how remote worker infrastructure created an attack pathway, and security researchers warn this pattern will intensify as attackers target the home network perimeter.
The Scale Problem
India has approximately 200+ million home internet connections and millions of small businesses. Globally, we’re looking at billions of routers and IoT devices. Research suggests that 30-40% have never changed their default credentials. That’s hundreds of millions of devices waiting to become targets for AI-powered automated attacks.
And here’s what makes this particularly concerning: most users don’t even know how to access their router’s admin panel. It’s sitting there – under the TV, on a shelf in the office, in the server closet – blinking innocently with “admin/admin” welcoming any AI-powered scanner that bothers to check.
In 2026, we’ll likely see:
- Sophisticated attack chains starting with compromised home routers and ending inside corporate networks.
- Financial institutions monitoring transactions originating from residential IPs known to be compromised.
- Increased regulatory pressure on ISPs and device manufacturers to eliminate default credentials.
- Cyber insurance policies requiring verification of home router security for remote employees.
- Law enforcement struggling to distinguish between malicious actors and unwitting “cybermules.”
- Enterprise security teams needing open discussions with remote staff about securing their home networks.
The Uncomfortable Solution
The technical fix is straightforward: change default passwords, enable automatic firmware updates, disable remote administration unless necessary, and segment IoT devices onto separate networks.
The implementation challenge is enormous. Convincing hundreds of millions of non-technical users and small business owners to take these steps is difficult. For enterprises, it means extending security policies beyond the corporate perimeter to include the home networks of remote employees – a conversation nobody wants to have but everyone must have.
Until that happens, home routers remain the internet’s soft underbelly: cheap, plentiful, poorly secured, and increasingly capable of sophisticated attacks rather than just simple packet-flooding. The mules are not just carrying messages anymore. They are being equipped with tools to break into houses, and they don’t even know it.
What Organizations Must Do in 2026
The reality organizations must accept: getting breached in 2026 isn’t a matter of if, but when. The question is whether you detect it quickly, contain it effectively, and recover completely. Organizations that thrive in 2026’s threat landscape will need to:
Embrace the security-productivity paradox. AI tools make employees more productive. They also create new attack surfaces. The answer isn’t banning AI – it’s governing it. “AI usage policies” will become as common as “email usage policies” were in the 2000s.
Treat vendors like extended network perimeters. Your cloud provider, your MSP, your SaaS vendors – they’re not service providers, they’re security dependencies. Their breach is your breach. Act accordingly. This now includes evaluating the home network security of vendor employees who access your systems.
Accept that perfect security is a myth. You will have vulnerabilities. You will have misconfigurations. Your remote employees will have inadequately secured home routers. The question is whether you can detect and respond before attackers exploit them.
Invest in continuously training people, not just deploying tools. The most sophisticated EDR solution is useless if your security team is overworked, undertrained, and can’t interpret the alerts it generates. The best network security means nothing if your employees are connecting through compromised home networks.
Plan for compromise. Incident response plans, tested backups, and communication protocols for breach scenarios are not pessimism – they are realism. Assume attackers will find a way in and plan for what happens next.
Extend security thinking beyond traditional boundaries. The corporate perimeter doesn’t exist anymore. It dissolved somewhere between cloud adoption, SaaS proliferation, and mass remote work. Security now extends to every device, every vendor, and every home network that touches your data. This may feel invasive, but it’s necessary.
The Opportunity in the Chaos
Security challenges create opportunities for organizations that address them effectively. As competitors struggle with AI governance, supply chain risks, cloud misconfiguration, and compromised home routers, those who solve these problems gain a genuine competitive advantage.
Customers and insurers now evaluate vendors based on security posture. Regulators are paying closer attention. Being demonstrably secure is not just defensive – it is a market differentiator, a definite USP.
For Indian enterprises and IT service providers, this becomes especially significant. As concerns rise about global supply chain security, Indian providers that demonstrate strong governance, validated supply chain security, and robust remote work policies can position themselves as secure global alternatives.
Organizations that succeed in 2026 will be those that recognize security is no longer about building higher walls. Those walls are irrelevant. Security is about resilience, rapid detection, effective response, and understanding that the threat landscape now includes everything from AI-powered APT groups to a home router with “admin/admin” credentials providing a back door into financial systems.
Threats in 2026 will be faster, more automated, and more sophisticated. Organizations that treat security as an enabler rather than an obstacle will find that the same AI and automation that power threats can also strengthen defenses when deployed thoughtfully and governed properly.
The conversation about home router security with remote employees may be uncomfortable, but it’s essential. The alternative – pretending the home network perimeter doesn’t matter – is no longer an option.
