Tips for hardening the security of your home or business network…

Here we share some important information that will help you check and enhance the security of your  routers, computers and mobile devices.

It provides some insights on port vulnerabilities, and how to improve security at your router point and downstream in your computer or tablet software firewalls, as well as on your phones. This should be the start of a continuous learning initiative for everyone who is in charge of even the smallest of home networks. (Please note that these links open in a new browser tab or window.)

1/ As users of Wordfence for security of WordPress sites we own or prepare, we appreciate the information shared by the Wordfence team regarding port vulnerabilities of some home routers due to port 7547 being left open. This is sometimes known as the “Misfortune Cookie”, or the MC vulnerability. Use the above noted page’s “SCAN ME” link to check that port in your router.

There is further information on the Misfortune Cookie here, including J.D’s comment that the attacks MC proliferates are “dictionary attacks”, which can anyone can easily block with strong passwords avoidance of “Admin” or use of any other common names for your login user name. Although the resulting attacks are not actually brute-force type, it is absolutely essential for you to assure that your port 7547 is not open. If it is, call your ISP immediately, and have this rectified.

2/ There are other ports that you don’t want to leave open if you don’t use them. Here is a cheatsheet on the basics of securing unused ports on your internet router or via your Windows computer firewall. Note that Apple devices generally configure relevant port access through each application / app.

3/ For securing of Mac and iOS devices, we searched the apple.com website and offer this search page for Security Configuration.

4/ SMishing – The text message form of  the well-known “PHishing” tactic, SMishing much more difficult to track and catches many cellphone users unawares.

5/ Here’s some encouraging insight from an Apr. 15 2017 Digital Trends article about the improved security of Android , and an overview of the top apps for securing your Android device

6/ Wikipedia’s general page has plenty of information and links to many other sources for information on network security.

7/ Finally, here’s an interesting web search result regarding iPhone security in April 2017. For updated articles, simply update the month name in the Google search terms on this search page.