Question about router and interent history

[Ravioli]

I talked to a friend today at school and he mentioned to me that the admin who has control of the router can see the internet activity/history of everyone connected to that router. At home my entire family is hooked up to one router which my dad set up and controls. I have my own computer, my own cable etc, can he still somehow see what i do and what pages i visit through the router somehow? If so, has he been spying on me for the past 5 years?!? He has no access to my computer at all, im the only one who can log into it. But does the router somehow provide him with information about my internet activity?

 

[Hectic Glenn]

I'm not sure, anyone who is connected to the router can log into your main router control panel if you have the admin password. You can look at the DCHP settings and see which computers are connected to the router and what IP address they have been assigned. This should be the most he is able to access though.

Do you have a special router or does he use any kind of special network monitoring programmes? If it's all standard stuff, then I'd say he hasn't seen your midget porn yet.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

No, basically.

 

[No Limit]

It really depends on the router. And it's not only the router, you can hook up a computer with a packet sniffer on it anywhere on the LAN and see all unencrypted traffic that passes through your subnet (if you really know what you are doing you'd be able to see encrypted traffic too without setting off alarms). This means you'd be able to view all web pages every computer on your subnet saw as well as pull out other sensative information sent, such as usernames and passwords.

All of this would require a fair amount of understanding of networking topology. Is your dad a very technical person? If he isn't as Hectic said your midget porn is probably safe. And if he is a very technical person that doesn't mean he is automatically spying on you. Many people with these skills have better things to spend their time on not to mention the ethical implications of spying on people in your household without their knowledge.

 

[Laivasse]

I worked in a company that did a lot of remote access technical assistance, and even in one instance where we were considering hooking up a packet sniffer to diagnose a certain problem, I was given the impression by our main IT guy that they are kind of a hassle to set up and monitor.

 

[Adabiviak]

How much other equipment/software does your dad have available? Our I.T. department, for example, has some software that shows where all the network requests go, with address translation and a graphical interface. During lunch, myspace and youtube hits skyrocket, for example. Note that this is live - unless the router maintains the history or it's being recorded where your dad can get to it, that's likely not available.

 

[No Limit]

I worked in a company that did a lot of remote access technical assistance, and even in one instance where we were considering hooking up a packet sniffer to diagnose a certain problem, I was given the impression by our main IT guy that they are kind of a hassle to set up and monitor.

Not sure why he would give you that impression. On networks with basic routers a packet sniffer can be installed within minutes. For educational purposes go and google "Cain and Able" (like I said, use it for educational purposes only). On networks where routers and switches have built in protection for man in the middle attacks (such as detecting the ARP spoofing that cain and able does) many of them will have their own built in packet sniffing capabilities. So setting up a packet sniffer really isn't all the difficult and in many cases it is required, at my company we do a lot of ethernet based software and hardware and without being able to deploy a packet sniffer our job would be impossible.

 

[Ravioli]

Thanks for all the info. My dad has worked with computers almost all his life, but networking has never been his primary focus. Hes the one that got access to the router only, and i dont know if he has any tools installed on his computer that he uses, except for the ones that came with the router. Hes never acted weird or suspicious or anything, and ive seen some pretty ****ed up shit on the net that would make him send me to a mental institution. So i think its ok.

Hopefully...

 

[No Limit]

Thanks for all the info. My dad has worked with computers almost all his life, but networking has never been his primary focus. Hes the one that got access to the router only, and i dont know if he has any tools installed on his computer that he uses, except for the ones that came with the router. Hes never acted weird or suspicious or anything, and ive seen some pretty ****ed up shit on the net that would make him send me to a mental institution. So i think its ok.

Hopefully...

What kind of router is it? If it's jsut a regular old linksys router he won't have any tools to sniff traffic at the router level (the most advanced for of packet sniffing I
ve seen on these routers is a list of 20 previous web sites viewed).

The other thing you can do is make sure there is no arp poisoning on your LAN which would allow a man in the middle attack and the ability to view all your packets. Just go to your router and write the mac address down on it (it will be on a sticker on the back or bottom of the router). Then go to your command prompt and type:

ping <router_ip>
arp -a

Usually your router IP will be 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1 for home routers (you can type ipconfig /all if you don't know, it will be your gateway IP 99.9% of the time). The ping command will add a arp entry in to your arp table. Then arp -a will print out all the entires in that arp table, something like:

Interface: 192.168.1.200 --- 0x2
Internet Address Physical Address Type
192.168.1.1 00-0f-b3-74-99-ce dynamic
192.168.1.54 00-15-f2-2f-11-d9 dynamic

Make sure that physical address, which is the mac id, matches what is listed on the back of your router. If it doesn't match there is a computer or device on your network sniffing packets. Hope that makes sense, I'm horrible at explaining things.

 

[Ravioli]

snip.

Thanks, il do that whenever im alone in the house, he sits close to the router:O