FBI warns old routers are being rented out to cybercriminals

Federal US cybersecurity alerts, including explicit FBI warnings, say end-of-life routers are being compromised and turned into residential proxy nodes rented to cybercriminals by the hour for phishing, credential stuffing and DDoS. Legacy models such as Linksys E1200, E2500 and E1000 stay unpatched, and enabled remote administration gives attackers persistent root access.

• Unpatched EOL routers become nodes in criminal proxy networks
• Linksys E1200, E2500 and E1000 named among exploited models
• Home IPs are rented hourly for phishing and DDoS attacks
• Users advised to disable remote admin and replace the hardware