Home and small-office routers is a hot target for security audits. Vulnerabilities and poor security practices is becoming the rule, rather than the exception. Researchers from Universidad Europea de Madrid found 60 distinct flaws in 22 devices. Full details of their research can be read in the Full Disclosure mailing list. Affected brands include D-Link, Belkin, Linksys, Huawei, and others. Among the flaws are at least one backdoor with a hard-coded password. Several routers allow external attackers to delete files on USB storage devices, and others facilitate DDoS attacks. About half of the flaws involve Cross Site Scripting and Cross Site Request Forgery capabilities
Summary: COTS Embedded devices don't have security you can rely on, but why is that so? OpenWRT may be an alternative.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Friday June 05 2015, @12:01AM
anyone got recommendations for a cheap OpenWRT-compatible router which can handle wifi?
if only there were a page about buying compatible hardware! [openwrt.org] i think they might even have a link to a place you can buy such hardware! [amzn.to]
good news, you quialify to help solve global overpopulation!
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday June 05 2015, @12:45AM
Unless you already a fair amount about hardware and OpenWRT you aren't likely to learn enough from that page to make an informed choice. Remember the question was not for a link to a router that could run openwrt, the poster wanted recommendations of ones that work well and are cheap. OpenWRT itself make it plain they do not do product recommendations, in fact one of the first things on the page you pointed to as an answer to the question is "OpenWrt does not recommend any hardware or manufacturer! "
That said, it is hard to make a good recommendation on such scant requirements. If the need is truly only OpenWRT, any WiFi and cheap I'd say look for the dump deals around the net (Woot! has featured them off and on recently for under $20) for the Western DIgital MyNet boxes, I had good luck with one, doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the hardware, WD just exited that market and dumped their inventory.
(Score: 1) by Han Held on Friday June 05 2015, @01:16AM
Yes, exactly. I have a google exactly as Gravis has (protip for gravis: get help RE anger issues), but I also figured it was a good opportunity to take advantage of the social nature of Soylent News to see what is actually in use "out in the wild" and which people in this community have experience with; I figured that others would benefit from that discussion too.
Thanks for the tip about WD's MyNet boxes. :)
(Score: 2) by TLA on Friday June 05 2015, @01:59PM
I use a Chinese offbrand Busybox wired router off the Netgear cable router supplied by Virgin Media as a go-between (basically because I don't trust the Netgear which is userwalled to shit). I've had that Busybox for ten years now, never gave me a bit of trouble.
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander