In a colossal oversight, AVM gets the fritz.box domain stolen: what this means for the company’s routers

THE Fritz!Box they are considered by many to be among the best Wi-Fi routers on the market, and if you look closely! In fact, it is difficult to find such a cutting-edge combination of hardware and software, both in terms of functionality and ease of use. Yet AVM, the company that produces them, was the protagonist of a rather serious “oversight”.

In fact, there is a very simple and mnemonic shortcut to configure the company’s products: fritz.box. Just write this address in the browser, when connected to the network generated by one of the AVM modems / routers, to immediately arrive at the login page where you can enter your login credentials.

From there you then enter the device configuration, from which you can change every parameter, including SSID, username And password. It’s a shame that for a few days the fritz.box domain has belonged to someone who It’s not AVM. In fact, here is what the WHOIS responds when asked about it.

# whois.nic.box

Domain Name: FRITZ.BOX

Registry Domain ID: D426926400-CNIC

Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.namesilo.com

Registrar URL: https://www.namesilo.com

Updated Date: 2024-03-05T15:27:59.0Z

Creation Date: 2024-01-22T23:06:20.0Z

Registry Expiry Date: 2025-01-22T23:59:59.0Z

Registrar: NameSilo, LLC

IANA Registrar ID: 1479

Domain Status: serverTransferProhibited https://icann.org/epp#serverTransferProhibited

Domain Status: serverUpdateProhibited https://icann.org/epp#serverUpdateProhibited

Domain Status: serverDeleteProhibited https://icann.org/epp#serverDeleteProhibited

Domain Status: serverRenewProhibited https://icann.org/epp#serverRenewProhibited

Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited

Registrant Organization: 3DNS Privacy, LLC

Registrant State/Province: CA

Registrant Country: US

What’s the problem? That now anyone who registered the domain could use it to create a page fictitious login (this is not the case at the moment), with which steal the information of “distracted” users. As long as you are connected to the local network of your Fritz! in fact there are no problems, but someone could use fritz.box by mistake even remotely, or, if the DNS had been modified, the problem would also arise locally.

However, it is much more likely that there will not be any major security risks in the short term, but rather that whoever is now in possession of fritz.box will offer AVM the domain sale (at a high price); a price that the German company will probably have to pay, for the safety of its users and for its lightness in this regard.