@skylar @icon_of_computational_sin @sapphire Yes, poorly written exploits can just crash the router without writing anything to flash, but that doesn't happen if the attackers have any level of competence.

If you go and download Mirai (if would be free software if only it had license headers), you'll be able to trivially exploit many routers on the internet via password guessing and get quite a substantial botnet (by design it doesn't write anything to flash to avoid detection, but really any vulnerable router that gets power-cycled soon gets re-infected).