If you use a Netgear router for your home network, please log on to your router and use the upgrade feature to apply an important security update. That feature is probably located under the Advanced and/or Administration sections of the router’s web-based menus.
This update addresses several vulnerabilities, some of which are remotely exploitable. The linked page indicates which vulnerabilities affect which routers, and I found that my router was affected by one of the vulnerabilities.
If a character in a story you’re writing needed to exploit this kind of thing against a target, it’s not a great stretch of the imagination. If your character emailed her target an email with a link to a web page she controls, and if the target clicked the link while on a computer at home, she’d have the target’s IP address (she could get that from looking at server logs). Once she knew the target’s IP address, she could interrogate the address herself with readily-available network tools, or she could use something like shodan to try to identify the kind of router her target uses. If the target has remote administration enabled (which may be a default settings in some router models), she could use publicized vulnerabilities like the ones linked above to break into her target’s home network.
You should probably run updates on your home router even if it isn’t made by Netgear.
Carl Welch: Writing Tech 