Concerns When Buying A Used Wired Router

When purchasing a used wired router, are there ways a previous owner can hack the router that would lead to my home network being compromised?
Naturally a new owner should change the password.
But are there other things I should be aware of or watching out for?
An example of the wired routers I am talking about would be like the Linksys BEFSR41 or BEFSR81.

 

may as well do a factory reset and then set it up again. quicker than checking on every setting. Considering the price of new wired routers I dont really see the point in buying a used router.

 

BEFSR41 - The best router logs of any router I've ever used

Yes, do factory reset.

 

Factory reset, meaning press the reset button, correct?
I was planning on doing that anyway to circumvent the password, which probably would no longer be the default 'admin'.

Buying new Linksys routers, of the types I mentioned, is not easy, nor cheap.
If your search turns up one that says it's new, closer scrutiny will usually reveal that it is refurbished. Plus they don't come with the AC adapters, which any old one will not do. And the asking prices are usually around $100 or higher.

So used becomes a good deal (sometimes under $20 with free shipping and including power cord).

But as the topic title suggests, I am concerned about what, if anything, a previous owner could do to hack or infect the router.

 

Reset - yes, hold in 5 -10 seconds.
MAC address is about the only ID. Not routable.
I really can't think of anything else.

I still use BEFSR41. The only problem I have is a Cisco bug in interpreting one command from android market downloads - it causes the router to reset WAN IP. Just causes a delay, otherwise works fine.

 

I have used the BEFSR41 for many years.
Recently I discovered that a new (and very inexpensive) TP-LINK router allowed for literally twice the download speeds.
The BEFSR41 is hardware version 1.
I'm hoping that the newest version number (4.3, I believe) might make a difference in those speed results. Could also be firmware, I guess.
But for now I am using the TP-LINK until I can reinsert a Linksys back into the mix that allows for the same faster speeds.

 

I introduced a BEFSR41 ver.4.3 into the network and it has made a difference.
I'm now getting the same speeds as with the TP-LINK... much faster than my older ver.1.

 

Do you have the most recent firmware version for your hardware version?
I just upgraded the firmware on the Linksys routers I own, and I was not having success using the browser interface to do it. I finally used the Tftp.exe utility and firmware upgrades went smoothly.

 

I think I do have the last stable version.
Router is BEFSR41v3, firmware 1.05.00 from April 2004
http://homesupport.cisco.com/en-us/support/routers/BEFSR41

 

Yep.
I haven't looked thru all the release notes, but I wonder if any of the newer hardware versions (4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3) have firmware updates that fix your issue?