The victim's IP address can still become a 'launching pad' for hackers to commit crimes.
IP addresses play a crucial role in routing data between websites or games. If this information is accidentally leaked to hackers, could you face a cyberattack like something out of a movie?
What can hackers do if they know a user's IP address?
Accordingly, even without directly revealing passwords or personal data, IP addresses can still become a target for hackers to launch denial-of-service attacks or exploit vulnerabilities on devices. For example, in November 2021, streamer xQc lost his internet connection after the game Crab Game exposed players' IP addresses to denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
PHOTO: SCREENSHOT FROM PANDA SECURITY
Through IP address lookup tools, attackers can quickly identify the internet service provider in the same city or geographical area as the victim. This location data has caused serious problems, such as the 2016 lawsuit filed by a Kansas family against MaxMind for mistakenly assigning 650 million IP addresses to their farm. Additionally, DDoS attacks can overwhelm traffic, disrupting gaming, video calls, or paralyzing entire networks in ways that firewalls cannot prevent.
How do hackers infiltrate your system?
To penetrate deep into a network's internal systems, attackers need 'entry points' such as compromised security cameras, servers with weak passwords, or remote control software containing vulnerabilities. Poorly configured IPv4 port forwarding or lax IPv6 firewall settings can expose these services to the internet, similar to the case of OpenWrt users who inadvertently exposed file-sharing ports due to firewall settings allowing forwarding.
Notably, in October 2026, Microsoft announced a critical vulnerability, CVE-2026-105016, in the QUIC protocol, allowing manually generated IPv6 traffic to execute malicious code on Windows .NET applications, although it is unclear whether this has been actually exploited. However, Microsoft advises against completely disabling IPv6 as it may cause errors in some Windows operating system components, while a properly configured router firewall can still block unauthorized external connections.
To proactively protect themselves, users should carefully check their router's firewall settings for both IPv4 and IPv6, remove unnecessary remote access rules, and regularly update their software. While virtual private networks (VPNs) can help hide public IP addresses from websites, this solution cannot patch existing software vulnerabilities, and users need to thoroughly test its effectiveness before using it.
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The full story
This article is one source in a clustered incident — the cluster page carries the summary, timeline and every other outlet covering it.
