is it possible for a hacker to change your WiFi settings?

[hunter2k9]

I was having a discussion with a friend and was saying that a hacker can change your WiFi settings and bump you out of your own network. Iwanted to find evidence of this online to show my friend but haven't found anything. Can this be done? or am I wrong? is there any online source that I could use to evidence this?

btw... I'm not looking for instructions on how to do this, only evidence that it can be done

[i0wnj00]

Hackers will sniff, use dictionary attacks, use exploits (like buffer overflows or DOS attacks) or execute malicious scripts to gain access to the admin page of routers. Routers may store the passwords in cleartext inside the NVRAM, RAM, ROM or EPROM. These are the same methods hackers will do to take over your Yahoo! email, FB account etc..

I doubt any Corporation or other owner of a wifi network wants anybody to publicly know that their wifi network was compromised. Incidents like that will be quickly sweep under the rug. Embarrassing and humiliating.

[SouthEastKen]

hmm... i don't think so.. haven't heard of it before. :/

[strutswell]

Well it depends on what they have access to already, and how you are protecting your network.

An open (unsecured) wifi network can be accessed by anyone, and if you left the default admin password then certainly somebody could login as admin, change the settings and block you from your own wifi network. But of course you can just factory reset the wifi router to regain access

If you use WEP encryption, you might as well be open (unsecured). WEP is easily cracked and there are many exploits available to do this. I won't provide links but just google search for WEP crack or something.

WPA-2 is your best bet, there's different variations of it but the longer encrypted key makes it nearly impossible to crack (but anything is crack-able) so if your scenario is as safe as WPA-2 then I would say "no way" but you never know, anything is possible...

[DRNewcomb]

If you allow modification of your WiFi router's settings via WiFi an have either an open (unencrypted) WiFi signal or use WEP encryption, you are just asking for this to happen. It used to be very common for people to just plug in and run Linksys routers with no concern for security. Of course, if you have physical access to the router you can always push the reset button to put it back like it came out of the box but most people are too dumb to even know about that. Most more modern routers come with some sort of default security.

At the very least your router should use WPA security and be set to deny modification via WiFi. It's also a good idea to change the default admin password as some viruses are now attempting to modify your router's settings, particularly the DNS server.

[i0wnj00]

If you allow modification of your WiFi router's settings via WiFi an have either an open (unencrypted) WiFi signal or use WEP encryption, you are just asking for this to happen.

Another thing is that some routers allow the user to remotely access the admin page.
I would turn this off if this feature isn't needed.

[DRNewcomb]

Another thing is that some routers allow the user to remotely access the admin page.
I would turn this off if this feature isn't needed.

On all the routers I've seen this feature is deactivated by default. OTOH, admin access by WiFi is often on by default.