Cape Town news has discovered a security hole in Telkom’s premium combo DSL router that allows hackers to obtain a DSL account’s username and password.

This information is then used to gain Internet access, using the DSL account, and deprives victims of bandwidth they have paid for.

The premium combo DSL router has a Remote Acess feature which is disabled by default. However, this security measure is easily defeated by connecting to the router via the alternative port number.

To protect yourself from this security hole, please ensure that your router’s firewall is turned on and that your admin password has been changed to something non-trivial.

Ultimately, Telkom, is liable, I believe, for this security hole which has been widely exploited already to deny people use of the bandwidth they are paying exorbitantly for.

People who have had their bandwidth stolen in this manner, may contact me if they are interested in joining a legal suit against Telkom.

Despite my efforts to get Telkom to reinstate my bandwidth, they refuse to respond to my correspondence.

These people are spreading a message (by email) that is very dangerous.

They are attempting to persuade people to download some software that they have allegedly written that will do a “network test” of the local South African network.

They say that their software is open source and that the source code will be available for download from their site, along with a self installing program. Big deal. If you install their self installing program, you don’t know whether that program is actually the result of compiling the supplied source code.

What their program is supposed to do is access a list of local sites for about 5 minutes and then uninstall itself.

Fact is, they’re asking you to trust them that all the claims they make are true.

What they describe sounds to me like a DDOS (Distributed Denial Of Service) attack.

Even if they have the best intentions, their “network test” program could quite easily wreak havoc.

Do you really want to risk being part of taking down South Africa’s network?

I think this is madness!

Cool link: Brilliant Bru & Boegie cartoon strip of this story