Exploiting routers

Previously, we saw how to exploit routing protocols. Now it is time to learn how to exploit modern routers.

Router components

Like every major networking device, a router is composed of many internal components:

• CPU: Executes system operations
• RAM: Used to store instructions
• ROM: Contains boot instructions
• Flash: Contains the IOS
• NVRAM: Contains the startup configuration file:

Router bootup process

To boot up, every major router goes through multiple steps:

1. First, the router performs a POST.
2. It loads the bootstrap.
3. It locates and loads the operating system.

4. You can choose between entering setup mode or loading the configuration file:

Router attacks

You learned about routing protocol threats, and now we will discuss attacks against routers; even the hardware faces many challenging threats:

• DDoS attack
• Man-in-the-middle attack
• Router firmware attacks

The router exploitation framework

The Routersploit framework is an open source tool to exploit router-embedded systems. You can clone it from...