There’s nothing better than lying in bed and being able to remote into your router to restart it or update the firmware to fix a security vulnerability!
It’s even better when a company makes a nice GUI app for the regular user to navigate these options with ease
What’s even better again, is that the app doesn’t store usernames or passwords or send any data to any server… that is, until now
I’ve been using a Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 for a while now, and using the Netgear Genie App to admin it. It was a great app, which you could control the router settings, see connected devices, view traffic stats, setup parental controls and much more
You enter your local admin / password and the app connects you to the router. There’s an additional option to create a Netgear account and remotely manage the router, but if you don’t create one, you’re free to use it offline.
As of recently, when you try to admin the router from the app you are greeted with the following error to let you know you have to upgrade to the latest Nighthawk App
The issue being, the app will not work unless you setup a Netgear account
This means you are giving Netgear, access to your local router password (Which they store in your account)
Should there ever be a breach / data dump from Netgear, attackers could potentially gain access to every device every registered through Netgear.com including remote access to the router itself. This in turn, could give them full access to every device on your home network. Including access to shares and NAS directly connected to the Readyshare option of the device