Wi-Fi routers are vulnerable to viruses
The viral infection that began in Cambridge, Massachusetts, somewhere between MIT and Harvard University, failed to cross the Charles River into Boston; in California, the San Francisco Bay stymied a similar attack.
This was not a biological infection, but the first simulation of an airborne computer virus. It spread by hopping between wireless routers, which are more susceptible to viruses than computers, says Steven Myers of Indiana University in Bloomington. "We forget that routers are mini-computers. They have memory, they are networked and they are programmable." And since they aren't scanned for viruses, or protected by existing firewalls, they are easy targets. Myers knows of no actual router viruses, but says such a virus could steal credit-card numbers, make the router send out spam and block incoming security patches.
