Potential WiFi security issue

[AbsoluteGuardian]

Hi!

So I'm in the UK and I have a Virgin Media Superhub 3. Last night our internet became incredibly slow and this coincided with a neighbour moving in upstairs. I thought nothing of it initially and as it turns out there's a fault in the area but I decided to investigate earlier today and things seem a little iffy.

I was able to sign into the settings page for my router and see what devices are connected to it, and 3 of them were unaccounted for. One of them was a desktop computer, one unknown and the other a Samsung Galaxy S7 (which neither I or my housemate own). I then wanted to change the wifi password just to be safe but I was booted out of the settings page...I signed back in, 'changed' the password...And got booted off again. The password never actually changed and from that point several things happened. A) I couldn't log into the page because the password was flagged as incorrect, B) I COULD log in but I was booted off instantly, C) I could sort of log in but it would just come up with a message saying 'Only one person can view the settings page, please try again later'

I phoned Virgin, explained the situation to them, they told me to do a factory reset on the Superhub (I did this, 3 times, every time to no effect.) They then simply gave up and the person on the faults team told me they'll send me a new Superhub, completely ignoring what I mentioned about other devices being connected to the network.

Since then I've been running Wireless Network Watcher and sure enough, for hours I could see my own PC, my housemate's PC as well as a PC that was listed twice (identified by its motherboard in one entry and by Amazon Technologies in the other). The Samsung phone also came up.

As I'm typing this up it's quite late and the 'rogue' PC has vanished, presumably having been switched off but the Samsung is still there.

I'm kind of at my wit's end with this and the new router won't be here until at least Thursday, I don't seem to be able to do anything as I can't even access/change my router settings.

 

[Emerald]

is the device you are using to log in to the router connected via wifi or network cable?

to change the password on a router you need to use a wired connection.

 

[AbsoluteGuardian]

is the device you are using to log in to the router connected via wifi or network cable?

to change the password on a router you need to use a wired connection.

Wired.

 

[bill001g]

Make sure you disable WPS on the new box. This is easily cracked and once someone has the 8 digit code they will be given whatever wifi password you set. You can not change the WPS code so its a one time crack. Still this is different than the admin password and there is not simple way to crack that. Your best option..and what is normally the default... is to make sure the option to configure it via wifi is not enabled.

Still the reset should work. You should be able to feel the button depress when you run a needle or whatever into the small hole. It is actually pretty easy to miss the switch if you are using a very thin needle.

 

[AbsoluteGuardian]

Make sure you disable WPS on the new box. This is easily cracked and once someone has the 8 digit code they will be given whatever wifi password you set. You can not change the WPS code so its a one time crack. Still this is different than the admin password and there is not simple way to crack that. Your best option..and what is normally the default... is to make sure the option to configure it via wifi is not enabled.

Still the reset should work. You should be able to feel the button depress when you run a needle or whatever into the small hole. It is actually pretty easy to miss the switch if you are using a very thin needle.

Well I've just managed to get past the minefield of disconnects that the settings page is, set a new wifi password, disabled WPS on instinct and...The Samsung phone still shows on the network watcher. Inactive most of the time but then active for a while. Trying to get into the settings page to set up a MAC filter maybe is impossible though, I can sign in (sometimes) but as soon as I hit the MAC filtering page I'm out again.

 

[bill001g]

Disable the wifi radios until you have everything setup and with only 1 wired pc connected it should not cause issues. If it does the box is likely defective. I guess you could even disconnect the internet to be really safe.

 

[AbsoluteGuardian]

Disable the wifi radios until you have everything setup and with only 1 wired pc connected it should not cause issues. If it does the box is likely defective. I guess you could even disconnect the internet to be really safe.

Here's a question, why would my phone, a Huawei, appear with the same default gateway as the Samsung Galaxy? This doesn't happen all the time but every other time I glance at it they both share the same gateway. I'm pretty sure Samsung doesn't make network adapters FOR Huawei.

 

[bill001g]

Not sure what you are looking at. The gateway for your network should always be your router. The term gateway pretty much exactly that, it is the device that has the path outside the subnet.

 

[AbsoluteGuardian]

Not sure what you are looking at. The gateway for your network should always be your router. The term gateway pretty much exactly that, it is the device that has the path outside the subnet.

https://gyazo.com/252fac2415cae06e548fe30e152128d4

And I just realised that 'My Router' shows up twice but under a different MAC address. Checking Wifi Analyser on my phones shows that one of those routers is just another wifi network, how is that possible and how is (presumably) my neighbour's router on my network while broadcasting its own network?

 

[bill001g]

Your router can have mulitple mac addresses. It can easily have 3. One for each wifi radio and one for the ethernet port.

 

[AbsoluteGuardian]

Your router can have mulitple mac addresses. It can easily have 3. One for each wifi radio and one for the ethernet port.

Sure but I check wifi analyser and the other MAC address and it belongs to a different Virgin wifi network. Yet somehow that network is on my network.

Today there are 5 devices that shouldn't be there, including one clearly labelled 'Ben's Laptop'

 

[AbsoluteGuardian]

https://gyazo.com/979e86ea7955121bdbf282053199327f

There are now a bunch more devices on here, the fact that a majority of them show up as ethernet connected is just bizarre since there's physically no way for them to be. The only thing that's connected via ethernet is my PC.

 

[bill001g]

See if there is SSID on your router that maybe you don't know about. Maybe the ISP is doing public hotspot.

There are many network scanning tools but it should be as simple as put your phone close to the router and have it list the available networks. Anything coming from your router should be a lot stronger than things coming from outside your house.