Thanks; you mention more attack vectors that sometimes slip my consideration. Hackers are making use of bad gateways alright; according to Krebs’ site recently, he reminds the actual code Lizard Squad types are using was first discovered a while ago by “Dr. Web”, and he defines it as “crude” code…if something so simple can easily be passed around miscreants having minimum skills like a new “party favor”, and pranksters just need to ping for points of access, all gateways will need to get as secure against such intrusions as (ironically) current Comcast-issued routers/modems appear to be. Cheers!

Could be. There are several other compromised devices from the IoT people build to control their home electricity and other things. In such cases as routers and other connected devices, people don’t even care to change their default passwords so they are easy to compromise. And hackers are making good use of them.