I have to admit however, I didn't expect anyone would go through the trouble of a factory default reset to fix what I made a glaring visual trick - sorry for those who went through such length in an attempt to "fix" it. That was why I overdid it with the red and blue glow and also making it interactive, not just with the slanted banner.
There is no doubt that this was a very original and clever trick and I will admit utterly harmless in the
direct sense. The router security was not in any way compromised.
Having said all of the above, the problem with doing things like this is that there can easily be unintended consequences because you cannot predict how people will react to the prank. Given enough people on the receiving end and it may well have been the last straw for someone who's lively hood depended on his/her secure data transfer that day.
Myself, I spent a couple of anxious hours trying to work out what to do and trying different things. I realized it was an April Fool thing but didn't for one moment think that Merlin was the culprit, I assumed I'd be hacked.
So, I closed down port 21 which I'd just opened, pulled the data stick out of the router, and tried different browsers. When two different machines showed the problem I factory rest my router and spent 90 minutes putting it all back. I even changed all my passwords.
My wife was paranoid about security before this and I've had endless grief from her since. "Why can't you use Asus firmware, not good enough for you and now look what's happened. Perhaps the next prank will be more serious, go back to Asus firmware before there is something serious. etc. etc."
So although I admire the cleverness of it, I could really have done without it.
Cheers,
Bob.
