Avast Home Network Security scans a user’s home network and routers for potential security issues.

Avast is always looking to the future to both predict and solve tomorrow’s biggest cyberthreats. As the world is growing more interconnected than ever before, with phones, TVs, home security and even thermostats being connected to the Internet, we acknowledge the importance of entire networks being properly secured.

Most Internet routers -- the keystone to your home network -- are riddled with security issues, which makes them into easy pickings for hackers. A study conducted by Tripwire showed that 80% of the best-selling routers have easily exploitable vulnerabilities. Furthermore, the most basic login credentials, such as having both the username and the password “admin”, or admin/password, or even admin/<no-password>, are used for more than 50% of all routers worldwide. An additional 25% of consumers use their address, birthday, name, or family name for router passwords. As a result, more than 75% of all routers are vulnerable to simple password attacks, which is basically an open invitation to malicious hackers.

Avast Home Network Security helps solve this issue by scanning a user’s home network and routers for potential security issues. In the Avast Antivirus Nitro Update, Avast has completely rewritten Home Network Security’s detection engine; this has created a stronger DNS hijacking detector and allows scans to run in parallel to identify threats faster. The engine now supports address resolution protocol (ARP) scans and port scans, performed from the kernel driver, which makes scans ten times faster than in previous versions.

Uncover new threats with Home Network Security 

Avast Home Network Security identifies weak Wi-Fi passwords, vulnerable routers, compromised Internet connections, and enabled, but not protected, IPv6.

Utilizing Avast Web Shield, Home Network Security can automatically block cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks on the router. CSRF exploits take advantage of website vulnerabilities that enable cybercriminals to transmit an unauthorized command to a website. The command looks like it was sent from a user that the website knows and trusts. This way, cybercriminals can impersonate the user and, for example, transfer money in the user’s name without the user's knowledge. Using CSRF requests, attackers are able to make changes to routers remotely, in order to overwrite DNS settings or redirect traffic to attacker-controlled sites (usually fake banking sites) to then steal banking passwords.

Finally, Avast Home Network Security lists all the devices on the network so users can make sure that only trusted devices are connected. Once an issue arises, we offer solutions to the user on how to resolve it and keep their network secure.