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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.
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by TLA on Friday June 05 2015, @01:54PM
There is no compromise solution worth even discussing here: you have have a secure system or you can have a system that's easy to use. A consumer box has to be easy to use; you're dealing with people even those who think they're clever by setting up their own home networks, who think shit should just be a case of plug it in and go. The fewer hoops they have to jump through to get $Foo brand router running the better for $Foo brand, who'll see their feedback go up regardless of how secure their gear actually is. Ergo, a secure consumer router is a pipedream at best, a delusion at worst.
Not the Car Analogy: A good toaster toasts bread and will do that all day, yet is a fire risk. A safe toaster has no hot elements - you're gonna need animal sacrifices and working knowledge of Middle English Latin to get that to toast anything before the thermal cutout kicks in and shuts the whole kit down for the next six hours.
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2015, @04:45PM
I disagree. Once you setup something like OpenWRT it is fairly non intrusive. However you can not forget about it. You still have to update it. The bugs were already there. They just have not been discovered yet.
Even a toaster needs maintenance. You still have to dump it over and get the crumbs out (or use the tray if you have a nice one). Pretty much everything needs maintenance. You will not be able to change the mind of someone who ignores it. They do not care in the first place.