Hundreds of thousands of internet gateway devices around the world , primarily residential cable modems , are vulnerable Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability to hacking because of a serious weakness in their Simple Network Management Protocol implementation . SNMP is used for automated network device identification , monitoring and remote configuration . It is supported and enabled by default in many devices , including servers , printers , networking hubs , switches and routers . Independent researchers Ezequiel Fernandez and Bertin Bervis recently found Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability a way to bypass SNMP authentication on 78 models of cable modems that ISPs from around the world have provided to their customers . Their internet scans revealed Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability hundreds of thousands of devices whose configurations could be changed remotely through the SNMP weakness that they found Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability and dubbed StringBleed . The leaking Attack.Databreach of sensitive configuration data through the default `` public '' SNMP community string is a known problem that has affected Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability many devices over the years . The two researchers first located Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability a small number of vulnerable devices , including the Cisco DPC3928SL cable modem that 's now part of Technicolor 's product portfolio following the company 's acquisition of Cisco 's Connected Devices division in 2015 . The researchers claim Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability that when they reported Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability the issue to Technicolor , the company told them that it was the result of an access misconfiguration by a single ISP in Mexico rather than a problem with the device itself . This prompted the researchers to perform a wider internet scan that resulted in the discovery Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability of 78 vulnerable cable modem models from 19 manufacturers , including Cisco , Technicolor , Motorola , D-Link and Thomson . Regardless of the cause , the problem is serious , as attackers could exploit this flaw to extract administrative and Wi-Fi passwords or to hijack devices by modifying their configurations . There 's not much that users can do if their ISP supplied them with a vulnerable device , other than ask for a different model or install their own modem . Unfortunately , not many ISPs allow their residential customers to use their own gateway devices , because they want uniformity and remote management capabilities on their networks . Determining if a particular device is vulnerable Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability to this issue is possible , but requires a bit of work . An online port scanner like ShieldsUp can be used to determine if the device responds to SNMP requests over its public IP address . If SNMP is open , a different online tool can be used to check if the device 's SNMP server returns valid responses when the `` public '' or random community strings are used . At the very least this would indicate an information leak problem .