Router hacking

[#1]

Question from a non-techie user - how easy or difficult is it for a PlusNet Fibre router to be hacked? I have been finding my Microsoft, Gmail, Amazon accounts etc. hacked over the past year, and now also my own PlusNet email account and am having to reset passwords fairly regularly. Credit card has had to be cancelled due to fraudulent activity a coupe of times in the past year too. This seems to be repeating cycle where there is obviously some latent insecurity somewhere which is getting exploited. I have Bullguard on my laptop and regular full system scans find nothing. My laptop, Iphone, Samsung TV and Sky box are the only devices connected to the router. By a process of elimination, is it the router? A more knowledgeable friend has suggested asking for the router IP address to be changed and a full reset of all account passwords to try to break the cycle.....is that a good idea? I rang tech support but was advised it wouldn't be my router and I just needed to keep setting strong passwords.

Many thanks for any advice. 

[#2]

I doubt very much your router has been hacked @DramaQueen, my guess would be that one of your devices may have been compromised. If you are confident that Bullguard is telling the truth then, for me, the finger gets pointed to your other devices. Having said that Bullguard might simply be wrong and it would do no harm to seek a 'second opinion' using Malwarebytes for example.

[#3]

I agree with @Mook , hacking the router would only expose limited information to the hacker, when you access email accounts, bank accounts or make payments etc, the traffic is encrypted (you can tell from the web address starting https as opposed to unencrypted http), so the hacker cannot do MITM (man in the middle) attack by intercepting or capturing the traffic from/to your router unless your operating system (root certificate) is also compromised. It's more likely that you have malware like keyloggers etc on your system.

As a last resort, one way to make sure that your laptop isn't compromised is backup your data and do a clean installation of OS. If you're adventurous, I'd also recommend installing a Linux distribution, there're distributions suitable for non-techie users.

[#4]

Another possibility is that you are sharing passwords across services, and one of the places you used these passwords has been compromised and your credentials leaked. Bad actors will then use these username/password combos to try logging into popular email/ecommerce/financial services etc. in the hope of striking lucky.

You could do worse than run a scan against your email addresses here.

And try not to reuse passwords where possible.

[#5]

Also worth enabling 2-Step Verification where available. Microsoft, Google and Amazon certainly all provide it.