MikroTik's The Dude network management tool highlighted amid rising home router attacks in Poland

The Dude is a free network‑management application from MikroTik that scans local subnets to discover devices such as printers, routers, switches, DNS, FTP, IMAP, NTP, SMTP and web servers. It presents the results in a graphical interface and can export the map to image or PDF files. The current stable version 7.23.3 for Windows (2.15 MB) has been downloaded over 20,000 times.

Home routers are increasingly targeted by cyber‑attacks. Reports from Bitdefender and Netgear for 2025 recorded 13.6 billion IoT attacks on residential devices, roughly 30 attempts per household per day. In Poland, many users still rely on weak or reused passwords, and a global campaign in late 2025‑2026 compromised thousands of routers for malicious communication. A recent guide explains how to verify whether router settings have been altered, what signs of compromise to watch for, and how to access the router’s admin panel to secure it.

The combination of a powerful network‑visualisation tool and growing router‑security threats underscores the need for better home‑network hygiene among Polish users.