Episode: 1774
Title: HPR1774: Router Hacking
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1774/hpr1774.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 09:06:44

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This is HPR episode 1774 entitled Router Hacking.
It is hosted by John Kulp and in about 20 minutes long.
The summer is a quick what, why, and how I'm Hacking Router.
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Hey everybody, this is John Kulp and Lafayette Louisiana.
And today I'm going to talk to you about Router Hacking.
Now you might ask yourself first of all what is Router Hacking.
Well that is when you flash a router with alternate firmware.
Now the reason you might want to do this is because it would provide additional features
on your router and also might improve them performance.
I mean there are certain settings in there that you can get to with alternate open source
firmware that you cannot get to in the stock firmware for most routers such as boosting
the power of the signal and so forth.
Another consideration is privacy.
There have been stories in the last couple of years about router companies having a backdoor
software installed on their routers either by the NSA or by their nefarious agencies.
And one way to get around this is to hack your router and put alternate firmware on it.
So that would be a privacy consideration.
Apart from that, it's just plain fun to hack a router and it's something I've done, probably
I've done either 10 or a dozen routers and have used them off and on and given them
away to people and so forth.
And I almost always do it on a router that I purchased second hand for a very good price.
But it takes a great leap of faith to do it on your main router that you paid a lot of
money for.
So I would recommend if you're thinking about trying this, get yourself a second-hound router
somewhere really cheap and that's the way to learn how to do it.
Now you can get alternate firmware at various places.
The three best known, at least best known to me, alternate firmwares are the DDWRT firmware
and I'll have a link to their site on the show notes.
The most important part of their website for me is the router database because that's
where it gives you all of the routers that are supported by their firmware.
There's also the tomato firmware or tomato if you can prefer.
That one is a little bit more specialized.
It's mainly meant for a couple of different models of routers like the Alinxus WRT-54GL
and it says it's also compatible with the 54G and the 54GS.
But I have actually had, I think I've had all three of those and I did install tomato one
time and it was pretty cool but I decided to go with DDWRT instead.
Now the one that I've never tried but some people swear by is OpenWRT and I will have
a link to their website as well.
I cannot provide any information about them because I've never used OpenWRT but I imagine
that it does similar things to DDWRT which is to enhance the features on the router and
to give you access to more configuration options.
The first time I ever tried hacking a router was when my boss was cleaning out a closet
and he found an old router and he asked if I wanted it and I said sure I'll take it.
It happened to be compatible with the DDWRT firmware and I decided to try it because
what I wanted to do was to create an Ethernet bridge.
That's a router that is acting as a receiver sort of thing on your wireless network.
If you have your main router broadcasting the wireless signal you can have a wireless
bridge set up which will be a different router in another part of the house that receives
that signal and then allows you to plug in computers with Ethernet cables on the other
end and give them internet access.
What I wanted to do this for was because we had just recently completed a detached office
and I wanted my computers out there to be able to have hardwire internet access.
So I don't remember a whole lot about the process except for that it worked and it was
really thrilling the very first time I ever booted up a router into an alternate firmware
and saw all the things that it was capable of doing after that.
Because most of the time the stock firmware in a router does not allow you to do things
like create a bridge or a repeater bridge which would do the same thing as the bridge
only it would also repeat your wireless signal.
So what else have I used it for?
That's the main thing really and also just on my main router I liked the configuration
of it so even on my central router I hacked that also.
I'll tell you all of the routers in my house that I've used in the last five years have
been purchased very cheaply at either secondhand stores or at flea markets.
I don't think I've paid more than six dollars for a router and I've probably had eight
or ten of them.
My latest project was when I purchased a router at Goodwill and I'm just gonna I have on
these show notes the steps for my latest hack and I'm just gonna kind of run through them.
The first thing was that when I was visiting Goodwill I found on the shelf a Netgear WNDR
3,400 router and it was priced at $3.99 so that got my attention.
The first thing I looked for on the box was whether it was wireless in or only wireless
G. Wireless G is slower and older but this one is wireless in so I thought it was worth
checking out further.
So the next thing I always do is get out my phone and open up a browser and go to the
DDWRT database to check and see whether this router is compatible with the firmware.
And I was thrilled to find that this router had a green yes by it.
Now that means normally that you will not have any problems at all in hacking at.
Sometimes you will have a yellow yes which means it can be done but proceed with caution
or some message like that.
But normally if it has the word yes and it is in green letters you are good to go.
So the next thing to do is just be to make sure the thing powers on.
I took it right in there in the store I walked over to the AC outlet and plugged in the
router and watched it power up and then I got my phone out and looked to see if the phone
would pick up the ESSID of that router and it did so I decided I'm just gonna go ahead
and buy this router.
So I took it to the counter and paid my $3.99 and took it home.
The first step whenever you are going to hack a router is to get rid of any previous
configuration and you do this by doing a hard reset.
Now most of the user manuals for the routers will tell you how to do it.
There is a little button on the back that you have to press and hold for a certain amount
of time.
Having hacked numerous routers using the DDWRT firmware I'm in the habit now of doing
their so-called 30-30-30 method which is where while the router is powered on you hold
the reset button for 30 seconds and while still holding it you unplug the power supply
hold it for another 30 seconds.
This is continuously you don't let go of the button and then after that 30 seconds has
elapsed you plug the power back in and keep holding the button for another 30 seconds.
The first couple of times you do this you might find that you would like to have a third
hand to help you out but I found that if I kind of hold the router between my knees tightly
and then hold the button down with one hand I can ease the power cord in and out with
the other hand without too much trouble.
So I did the 30-30-30 reset to get rid of any previous configuration and then I hooked
up a laptop to the router with a patch cable.
Now doing any kind of router hacking first thing you want to do if you are using a laptop
to access the router's configuration page is turn off your own wireless adapter on your laptop.
You don't want to accidentally start configuring one of your own routers, one of the ones in your
own system. So just as a precaution I always turn off the wireless on my laptop, take a patch
cable and go out of my ethernet port into the back of the router just on one of the normal inputs
and then go to the address 192.168.1.1 which on most routers is the default page or default
IP address which will give you access in a web browser to the configuration page and once I
confirmed that I could get access to this that the router seemed to be working properly I then
go back to the DDWRT router database and then find the listing for my new router again
and you can click there on the router and it will take you to a page specifically for that router
with links to the proper files to download that contain the new firmware.
And on this router you have to do it in two steps. If you want to unlock the full potential of
the router you need the mega version of DDWRT but to get there you first have to install the mini
version. If you try to do it without installing the mini first they warn you that you could
brick your router and so I didn't want to do that. So I installed both the mini and the mega versions
of the router firmware or I downloaded them and then I read over the wiki page for this router.
Almost every router in their database will have a dedicated wiki page where users have contributed
step-by-step instructions on how to do it for this router. It can be different for
many different routers. I've had some that were super easy and others that were rather difficult
that inquired, sorry, inquired, required you to log into the router over really old school things
like telnet and run obscure commands and one of them one time I thought I had bricked it and
that it wasn't going to work but I was able to revive it by telnetting in and then running some
command at just the right moment after powering the thing on so that it did something and freed
it back up and I was saved. But this router did not appear to have any complications and so I just
went back to the stock configuration page on my web browser and went looking for the little button
that says upgrade firmware or update firmware and clicked that and then it takes you to a little
file chooser and I went and found the file that I had just downloaded, the mini version of the
DDWRT firmware and clicked okay and pressed the button that says upgrade and at this point is where
you cross your fingers and wait for a minute or two maybe three minutes while it is transferring the
file over to the router and running the upgrade command that will replace the stock firmware with
this open source firmware and so after a couple of minutes you'll see a couple of things happen
on the screen that make you think well it's probably done and then if you refresh your browser page
on the where the address is 192.168.1.1 refresh the page and you should if all went well
you should see the new configuration page for the open source firmware and this router was almost
disappointingly easy to hack because it worked exactly right the first time by just clicking some
buttons and once I had the mini firmware working I went ahead and installed the mega with the same
process only the upgrade firmware button is in a slightly different place in the DDWRT configuration
but so I went through the same process uploaded the mega firmware ran the upgrade process
and boom my router is fully hacked with a wonderfully configurable firmware by DDWRT
and one of the main things that I wanted to use the mega version for on this was the USB support
the the mini version actually would have served just fine if all I wanted to do was to make a bridge
or a repeater bridge but to get USB support working I had to install the mega version this is the
first router I've ever had that actually had a USB port and so I thought it would be worth trying
because I have this printer in my son's room that is it's a good printer but it doesn't have any
network access what we've had to do is simply take our laptop over there and plug a USB cable in
to do our printing and I thought well if this new hacked router has USB support maybe I can plug
that printer into it and then have the printer on the network through the router the in other
words the router will act as a print server and so I just went to the configuration page on the
mega version and enabled USB support enabled printer support applied the settings and plugged in my
printer and then rebooted the router and from there the only thing left to do was to go to a laptop
and try to add the printer using the cups interface on Linux and I configured it found the right
driver printed a test page and out it came from the printer over the wireless so this printer now
has access to the network by way of my new hacked router it was a little bit harder getting my son's
windows laptop configured to print to it but I did figured out there's a page on the DDWRT
website for USB printer support and they have a there's a wiki or something that showed the steps
that you need to do to make a Windows XP machine print to one of these USB printers through DDWRT
and I followed those same steps and it worked on Windows 8 so I'm assuming it'll work on Windows 7
or Vista or whatever also anyway that's about it I suppose I highly encourage this if
you can find a router at a thrift store or at a flea market or something like that that's priced
under five bucks and it shows up green on the DDWRT list buy it go ahead and buy and hack it even if
you don't necessarily plan to use it it's just fun to do and it's it gives you a real sense of
satisfaction so with that I think I am done here I'll talk to you guys later bye
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