Large numbers of home and small-office routers are under the control of hackers who are using them to overwhelm websites with more junk traffic than they can handle, security researchers said Tuesday. The devices are so poorly secured that they have given rise to self-perpetuating botnets commandeered by multiple attackers. "Self Sustaining" Botnets Thriving In Poorly Secured Routers [arstechnica.com]

Compromised routers are by no means new. They've been observed for years and have been observed affecting as many as 300,000 devices at a time. Multiple manufacturers have been known to be vulnerable, including Linksys, Asus, D-Link, Micronet, Tenda, and TP-Link.