Enterprise-level network equipment available on the black market conceals important information that hackers could use to infiltrate company networks or steal consumer data.
Researchers examined a number of used corporate-grade routers and discovered that the majority of them had been incorrectly decommissioned and then sold online.
Selling core routers
Eighteen secondhand core routers were purchased by researchers at cybersecurity company ESET, who discovered that on more than half of those that operated as intended, it was still possible to obtain the full configuration data.
All other network devices are connected via core routers, which act as the foundation of a big network. They are built to forward IP packets at the greatest rates and handle a variety of data transmission interfaces.