250,000 routers discovered with same SSH key

A researcher who wrote a program to include the "fingerprints" of collecting SSH keys watched curiously when he found one fingerprint on over 250,000 devices. It turned out to routers of the Spanish telecommunications provider Telefonica de Espana.

Some network would default SSH feature, which the manufacturer decides to roll out the same operating system image on all devices. Researcher John Matherly , founder of the Shodan search engine, also found two keys that 200,000 and 150,000 times were used, respectively.

"By analyzing these cases it is easy to get a picture of the systemic problems both hardware manufacturers and ISPs pests," said Matherly. He has a list of unique fingerprints collected offers now via Github to. "It would not surprise me if you find interesting security problems by analyzing why these things are configured incorrectly," he notes.