This blog post will talk about the topic, Hackers shut off my internet. It will also cover how hackers can shut off your internet. It outlines how to be safe from such attacks and how to prevent your internet from being shut down by hackers. This article also talks about detecting if a hacker has shut your internet off.
Can Hacker shut off my internet?
Yes, hackers can definitely shut your internet off. It’s entirely possible for a hacker to hack your router and shut off the internet. Most hackers have sophisticated methods and tools at their disposal to carry out attacks which can result in the unavailability of the internet.
Hackers use various methods or attacks to turn off your internet. Turning off your internet only means that they either have access to your wifi router or its ip address. Hackers can breach your home wifi and they can potentially cause a grave amount of damage. They can shut your internet off or they can harvest sensitive information and many more things
Let us discuss some of the simpler ways in which hackers can breach your home network and shut off your internet.
If your home wifi network has a weak password, a hacker can use a cloud based computer or a machine to implement a brute force attack, where he will guess your network’s password in minutes using a powerful computer. If he is able to get the password, then it is almost a walk in the park for him to shut off your internet.
There are many other attack methods to hack wifi networks. We will talk about a few sophisticated methods and tools that hackers use to breach wifi networks and shut down your internet.
The first method is to use aircrack-ng which is a complete suite of tools which gives you a holistic view of wifi networks to analyze network security. Hackers use aircrack-ng to crack wifi networks. This tool helps them to analyze the wireless network and shut it off. Hackers use aircrack-ng to usually target WEP, WPA or WPA2 networks.
Reaver is another tool that can be used to crack wifi networks. This method is based on the brute forcing of Wifi Protected Setup (WPS) registrar PINs to recover WPA/WPA2 passphrases. Once the cybercriminals have the access to the passphrases they can easily shut your internet off.
Hackers also use another very powerful and sophisticated tool known as wifite. Wifite is used to crack WEP or WPA/WPS encrypted wireless networks in a row. It is used when a hacker wants to target multiple wifi networks at the same time. When it comes to wifi Hacking wifite is one of the most useful tools.
These are the most powerful and effective ways in which hackers can shut down your internet. Cyber criminals use such attacks to cause damage to your wifi network or deny you internet service. They can also redirect your network traffic to their own malicious website in order to harvest confidential information.
How to detect if a hacker has shut your wifi off?
The easiest and most effective way to detect if your internet is hacked is to check if your internet is suddenly much slower than usual. Slow internet can be caused by a Wi-Fi hacker using up all your network bandwidth. There can be many other reasons for slow internet but if you don’t detect any other symptoms then it might be a wifi hacker.
The next way is to check your router and see if there are unknown devices on my local network. To check this you’ll have to first log into your router and then check and analyze the list of ip addresses. Then you’ll have to cross-check that list against the IP addresses of your own devices to see if there are any suspicious devices on your network.
Another method to detect if your wifi has been hacked is to check if your router’s password or admin credentials have been changed. A cyber criminal who’s targeting your wifi network might change your router’s password, preventing you from connecting to the internet services. They may also lock you out from your router’s backend by changing your admin credentials.
If the hacker locks you from your router’s backend by changing the login credentials it might be strenuous to get your service back. This can result in your internet being shut off. Hence it is very significant to follow some of the methods to protect your wifi network and router.
How to stop hackers from shutting down your wifi?
When your wifi network is hacked, the hackers can cause great deal of damage to you or to the other digital devices connected to that network. They can either infect your devices with viruses or make it a part of a huge botnet. So protecting your wifi network is a very important step in preventing such an attack.
There are many ways which you can use or implement to protect your wifi network and keep your internet from getting shut down by malicious hackers.
One of the simplest yet most effective ways to keep your wifi network safe is to keep a strong and complicated password for your wifi router. When you have a weak password it takes just minutes for hackers to bruteforce those credentials and shut down your internet.
Hence it is important to have strong passwords for your router to prevent brute force attacks.
The next step in order to safeguard your wifi network is to enable WPA2/WPA3 encryption.
WPA is a Wi-Fi Protected Access security protocol, used to safeguard your router against unwanted access with AES encryption.These simple steps will give any would-be Wi-Fi hacker a serious challenge.
Another step to take in order to prevent wireless attacks on your wifi network is to disable WPS. Wifi Protected Setup is a protocol used in some wifi routers which help you to connect to wifi using a pin or by just pushing a button, while it is very convenient, the security level of that router plummets. By disabling this feature, you can prevent easy logins.
The last step you can take is to deactivate wireless/remote administration. Remote administration lets you log in to your router’s admin settings from anywhere in the world. But unless you’re a developer, chances are slim that you’ll ever need to do this.
If you deactivate this feature, you’ll only be able to access your settings when your computer is physically connected to your router with an Ethernet cable. Deactivating remote administration is a convenient way to keep hackers out.
Hackers can definitely hack into your wifi router or your home network and shut down your internet services. This can even have worse consequences apart from just not having internet.
Hence it is important to have a safe and protected wifi network. Following the above steps along with having the most updated network infrastructure could help you keep your home network safe.
Conclusion
This blog post addressed the topic, Hackers shut off my internet. We understood how hackers can shut off your internet and cause you a great deal of trouble. It also outlines how to be safe from such attacks and how to prevent your internet from being shut down by hackers. We also talked about the different methods that can be used to hack someone’s wifi and eventually shut it off. In this article we also talked about the methods to detect and prevent such attacks happening on your network.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs): Hackers shut off my internet.
Can a hacker shut off your internet?
Yes, unfortunately a hacker can shut your internet off. Cyber criminals use a lot of sophisticated methods to hack into peoples wifi networks and shut it off, resulting in denial of internet services. There are various types of attacks that hackers can perform using their powerful computers to hack into your wifi and shut the internet off.
Can someone turn off my internet?
No, someone without any knowledge of computer network and wireless hacking cannot turn your internet off without access to your router or its password. Although there are wifi hackers who can hack your router or bruteforce wifi password and in turn shut your internet off. So unless your wifi password is too weak and you don’t have any security measures no one can turn your internet off.
Can hackers take over your router?
Hackers can definitely take over your router if your network security is too weak. If your router’s password is weak and a hacker is connected to it in a local area network they can definitely take over your router and use it in a mass botnet to implement a DDOS attack. They can also redirect your internet traffic and do many more malicious activities.
How do I know someone is stealing my WIFI?
- Check your Wi-Fi router’s status lights— The easiest way to see if someone unauthorized is using your Wi-Fi is to look at your router
- Use a Wi-Fi detective app— Try to detect of your internet is much slower than usual
- Use your router’s app—- Use the routers backend to check all the devices connected to the router and see any unusual devices.
- Log into your admin control panel— change your login credentials and lock out all unwanted devices.
References
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349059692_Penetration_Testing_Wireless_Network_Attacks_Method_on_Kali_Linux_OS
- Haq, Ikram & Khan, Tamim. (2021). Penetration Frameworks and Development Issues in Secure Mobile Application Development: A Systematic Literature Review. IEEE Access. PP. 1-1. 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3088229.
- Asaad, Renas. (2021). Penetration Testing: Wireless Network Attacks Method on Kali Linux OS. Academic Journal of Nawroz University. 10. 7. 10.25007/ajnu.v10n1a998.