Some dickhead was talking shit over a game then my entire wifi network shutdown? Thankfully called my cousin who’s pretty techy and he logged into my wifi login and said he “changed my dns” not sure what that meant but it’s working now. Severely un educated in the topic and I’m aware it probabaly won’t go past them fucking with my network but could any explain how they did that/ how to be preventative for it. If my cousin didn’t help woulda most likely been done but not sure. Appreciate any feedback
So, let me tell you something.
When you are connected to the WiFi, you can type https://192.168.1.1 (This is Class C Private Address - Accessible only when you are connected to Wifi) to connect to your WiFi Router. You can login to the router with the credentials - admin / admin or admin / password. It should be something very simple.
When you connect to the Internet, Your ISP will give an IP to your router. Your router has 2 Networks - Side A (Your Local Network : Router & Your Devices) and Side B (Your Internet: Router & ISP). So, you should have IP address when your router is connected to IP Address. If someone knows the IP Address and if Your router is configured to serve webpage even on 0.0.0.0 , then anyone on the internet can put your IP in their browser, prefixed with https:// they can access your router.
If credentials are simple, it is not that difficult. So, now how can he know the IP address. Probably the game should have displayed it on chat or during connecting to the game servers. If you are on VPN, then this is impossible unless your VPN also is totally insecure.
Your IP addresses change on every router restart unless you actually requested static IP from ISP. All ISPs would give only dynamic IPs and static IP Allocation is much costlier process. So, I am like 99% sure that you don’t have static IP. If you have restarted your router, don’t worry. Whoever did that cannot do that again.
Basic Change:
- Change the password of your router as soon as possible.
- Mask your IP Address using Steam configuration or Game configuration if available - Refer here : https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1433-AD20-F11D-B71E
- Using VPN would slow down your network performance - A gentle disclaimer.
“changed my dns” :
Okay - A Basic understanding of Internet is needed. Every website is actually running on some computer in some part of the world. So, browser is trying to access the service in that computer which is serving your request. If you type, google.com , it would actually go to 172.217.164.100 in backend. Every computer, when connected to internet, will be given a Public IP Address. Every other computer in the world can connect to that system using that IP Address. Basically, IP Address is the identity card and is unique at any point of time (No 2 internet facing devices can have same public address at same time).
But, there are 1000s and 1000s of websites. You cannot remember IP Address of every site. So, the website domain names came into existence. It is like phone book. You know 1000 people and you cannot remember all their phone numbers. But, you can remember the name. So, you store the name and number in your contact book and when you search for the name, number would be retrieved. Same applies for DNS.
DNS is like phone book for internet. There are many DNS providers in the world. When you type google.com, your computer will ask router “who is this google.com” and your router would goto the DNS and ask “Tell the IP address of the google.com” and DNS would tell “Google.com is at 172.217.164.100”. And router will tell your computer that this is the IP Address. Then computer would make the request to the IP Address. Now, if router is fed with wrong DNS address, router would go and ask the DNS server IP where DNS is not running. It won’t give any response and computer won’t get any response. And computer will says “DNS DXDOMAIN NOT AVAILABLE OR DNS PROBE ENDED”. All applications would talk with domain name and not with IP Address. So, if DNS Breaks down, everything would break down.
But, you can avoid this.
DNS can be set at 2 Levels : Router Level and Computer Level. If you have DNS at computer level, then don’t worry on anything at router level. Even if someone messes up, it would be much easier for you gain access back.
Thank you very much for that. Appreciate it a lot.
howd ur friend figured out ur DNS was changed?
As soon as they dossed me he threw on a vpn and said “now we’re in Brazil” assuming they’d go for him next. we were playing together on the server so also assuming if he didn’t have vpn on while in server they have his ip. Wether or not he changed with vpn his network should’ve received the dos because it was sent to his og ip not the “new one with the vpn on” like I said really un educated on the topic just now trying to get into understanding it
I have him the login into my network over the phone cuz I had motem with username and password right infront of my just gave it to him. He said he “stopped them from sending me more useless packets” but now after reading I think me unplugging my motem just reset my public ip and it stopped getting traffic from the dicks that dossed me
You didn’t get doxxed, that’s something different. That’s when your private info gets stolen and exposed to the public in an attempt to damage your image (as an example)
I think this was a denial of service attempt where the person sent a large number of packets to your public router to overwhelm the hardware for a few mins. It’s unlikely that they have the money or resources to sustain this attack though.
Given they may know your public IP or router’s DNS name, make sure you don’t have remote management enabled, change default password and maybe (if available) turn on DOS protection and disable ping response from WAN.
Depending on what game you’re playing, exploiters can find your IP and ddos you, it’s surprising common.
Hell, back in the day if you knew someone’s Skypes username you could do it one click