Actually, that didn’t seem all that difficult to do, at least a year or two back. While having a go at hacking my own router (to tests vulnerabilities), I also acted as an “ethical hacker” on some neighbouring WIFIs, managing to access a few of their routers that were still using the default universal username and password. Obviously no harm was done, but it gaveme an idea of how easy it was back then.

Lately, fibre cable companies seem to have upped security, and router default passwords are now non-universal, which is how it should be, since a vast amount of the population has now clue about router configuration.

Ransomware is less likely to come directly from your neighbours (vs general internet), but you never know what they could do if they manage to gain access to your personal network.