Over the past few years, consumer-grade routers have emerged as a key security threat. Whether manufactured by Asus, Linksys, D-Link, Micronet, Tenda, TP-Link, or others, small office/home office (SOHO) routers have suffered a variety of real-world attacks that in some cases have allowed hackers to remotely commandeer hundreds of thousands of devices.

Now, security advocates are sponsoring "SOHOpelessly BROKEN," a no-holds-barred router hacking competition at next month's Defcon hacker conference in Las Vegas. The contest will challenge attendees to unleash novel exploits on 10 off-the-shelf SOHO routers running recent firmware versions.

"The objective in this contest is to demonstrate previously unidentified vulnerabilities in off-the-shelf consumer wireless routers," organizers said. "Contestants must identify weaknesses and exploit the routers to gain control. Pop as many as you can over the weekend to win. Contest will take place at Defcon 22, August 7-12, 2014 in the Wireless Village contest area."

To qualify, attacks must exploit zero-day vulnerabilities, meaning those that aren't already public knowledge and for which no security patch is available. Contestants will be required to publicly demonstrate their exploit and privately provide technical details to hosts. The hosts, from the Independent Security Evaluators and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, are encouraging contestants to keep technical details private until after manufacturers have a chance to release fixes. Prizes have not yet been announced. A separate track involves a capture-the-flag-style contest where participants will be pitted against SOHO routers that have been hardened but that also contain known vulnerabilities.