Understanding Home Router Configuration Habits & Attitudes

要旨

Home routers serve as a gateway to the Internet and configuration issues such as weak passwords can simply be introduced by users that configured them, potentially leading to severe consequences. The most critical phase in the lifecycle of a home router is perhaps the initial setup intended for users to complete. Yet, the mindset and behavior of users during this process remain under-explored. In a comprehensive online survey of 392 participants across several regions, we find that router settings and user behavior vary significantly between China and English-speaking countries, influenced by factors like IT background, age, gender, and education. A majority of participants go through the configuration of their own routers, but many also admit keeping the default settings and are not actively maintaining their router firmware up-to-date, leaving security vulnerabilities unfixed. We estimate that 91% of participant routers run with default settings, which should push router manufacturers to focus on safe defaults. Moreover, while default passwords are often changed, some participants report coping strategies. With noteworthy differences that we have observed across user backgrounds, we believe that our takeaways can shed some light on advancing the area of home network security.

著者
Junjian Ye
Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing, China
Xavier de Carné de Carnavalet
Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands
Lianying Zhao
Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Lifa Wu
Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing, China
Mengyuan Zhang
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
DOI

10.1145/3706598.3714231

論文URL

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3714231

動画

会議: CHI 2025

The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (https://chi2025.acm.org/)

セッション: Smart Home and Buildings

G402
7 件の発表
2025-04-29 18:00:00
2025-04-29 19:30:00
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