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OpenWRT vs. FCC – Forced Firmware Lockdown? [video]
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- naner 11y agoIt says they're accepting feedback until August 16th... So until 12 days ago.
- godgod 11y agoWe want your feedback, unfortunately, the feedback office is closed for the holiday.
- Lord_Nightmare 11y agoThe initial comment period has been extended September 9th. This was requested by the ITT and TIA.
- slavik81 11y agoYou originally said the IEEE. Was that mistaken? What's the ITT and TIA?
- Lord_Nightmare 11y agoYeah, sorry about that, I was wrong.
- kefka 11y agoThis makes a great reason to buy Chinese equipment. Do that, it might be substandard, but you preserve your freedom.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- cordite 11y agoUnless of course their equivalent of the NSA doesn't install something that runs next to the firmware independently. > http://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/internet-privacy/snowden--the-nsa-planted-backdoors-in-cisco-products.html http://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/internet-privacy/sn...
- dingaling 11y agoAt this point in history I fear less the Chinese government intercepting my data than I do my own ( UK )...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- nine_k 11y agoIt's a nice option as long as it (1) is still legal to buy and use in the US and (2) Chinese government does not cripple it even harder than US government, just in different ways.
- anonbanker 11y agoSo far so good on both counts.
- anonbanker 11y agoI stick to Rockchip and Mediatek, myself. An 8-core MT6592 with 4gb RAM makes for a fantastic laptop. And China isn't sharing their backdoors with the Five Eyes, if they have them at all.
- lelandbatey 11y agoAlright, after searching on this a little bit more, it seems that the FCC is not prohibiting the installation of software like OpenWRT or DD-WRT, but are instead mandating that there is software for the radios only that ensures they operate in the manner they are certified for. There is much more information in the HN comments from a previous time where this was discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9959088 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9959088
- wtallis 11y agoGiven appropriately designed radio hardware, this would be a non-issue. But given the radios that are on the market right now, this could be a very bad thing in the short term for the most open products that are the only affordable platforms for further R&D of Linux-based wireless router software. Anything that would take ath9k hardware off the market before an equally-open successor is available would be more damaging than any interference these products are capable of producing.
- Gibbon1 11y agoI mess with radio's at work. The there are two issues. Often for testing one wants to check the radio operation outside the normal band or modes of operation. In my case, sweeping the radio across a really wide and band noting where the pll fails to lock. I'm going to really twitchy if I can test the pll at frequencies outside the band. Doing things like, turn off spreading and checking carrier and tx power. I'm sure more complicated radio's than I use have similar. The second is what is legal varies depending on where the product is sold and used. So so a mode that's legal in one country is verboten in another. In general though, I'd rather hate for the FCC to try and force manufacturers to lock people out. Because likely it won't work well and there is a definite cost to implementing secure boot. But then again the FCC is historically extremely hostile to the idea of ordinary people mucking with wireless. So this doesn't surprise me at all.
- TD-Linux 11y agoThe lab guidelines mention DD-WRT by name.
- wyager 11y agoA government-mandated locked-down radio firmware isn't much better than a government-mandated locked-down main firmware. The FCC should punish crimes, not impose prior restrictions on innocent people.
- cpncrunch 11y agoThe reason they're doing this is because a lot of crimes have been committed -- resulting in interference with weather radar. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10137739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10137739
- madez 11y agoThe reasonable answer to that is to regulate wifi frequencies world wide and modify weather radars if necessary. That would solve the interference problem while keeping the firmware open. Freedom is better.
- cpncrunch 11y agoAs I understand it, this was all known when 5Ghz wifi was introduced, so it was a trade-off (see the 2013 NTIA report for details). I don't think it makes sense for them to move all existing services in the 5Ghz band to a completely new band (which might not work anyway, due to the technical requirements of doppler windshear radar). It probably also wouldn't make sense to limit wifi to a small range of the 5Ghz band. However I'm not really an expert on this, so feel free to correct me. Oh, and you can get freedom -- it's just the radio software that's the issue. The obvious solution is to make the radio software un-flashable, and leave the router software flashable.
- mindslight 11y agoBetter off just building your own router. The high brow option is an embedded motherboard and minipcie wifi card. If the hardware is powerful enough to MASQ gigabit, it won't be obsolete for a decade. And you can upgrade wireless standards with a new card. The only reason there's such an upgrade cycle for consumer routers is that they're built shoddily and with the slowest CPU possible. And as much as I appreciate spectrum partitioning, we really need to get the major wifi chipsets completely reverse engineered so we can blow away this ambiguous spectre of "unauthorized" modifications and turn them into something normal. Randos stomping on ch12-15 isn't an actual problem - but that widespread rulebreaking coupled with the unknown of what further mods could do is scary to regulators. Destroy that unknown.
- dsr_ 11y agoIf that's the highbrow option, what's a mini-ITX motherboard with an AMD 5350, 4GB RAM, an SSD and an Intel 4-port gig-e card plus the onboard gig-e? Scout NewEgg for combos -- you too can run a fully supported OS on x86-64 instruction sets with familiar hardware, but at a low cost of both purchase and power.
- mindslight 11y agoYou built a server that also happens to route? I was thinking the low brow option would be an old laptop, but that's not going to suffice for someone who wants to keep up with wireless protocols (due to the same FUD under discussion). Obviously you can fix this (coreboot or modded BIOS), but specificity and tinker factor is going way up. It's the rise of low power general boards that really make this practical. I tried out the ECS E2100 board for a remote server, and with a silver PS it drew around 15W from the wall. It didn't work with the RAM I already had though, so I ended up going with an i5 which still only measured around 20W before I put drives in.
- ansible 11y agoI was thinking the low brow option would be an old laptop, but that's not going to suffice for someone who wants to keep up with wireless protocols Many laptops have mini-PCIe slots for the WLAN, so you could buy a new card and stick it in. Note that if you want to run 5GHz and the laptop didn't previously support it, you might need new antennas too. The other caveat is that with some laptops the BIOS will allow only a particular WLAN card to be used. Which is annoying.
- riskable 11y agoThe unintended consequences of this will be millions upon millions of compromised devices all over the world with owners completely unable to solve the problem themselves.
- tzs 11y agoOr the router manufacturers will properly modularize their designs so that the parts you need to replace to fix a compromise are separate from the parts that ensure that the radio stays on legal frequencies, under legal power limits, and uses legal modulation modes.
- sehugg 11y agoGrid-tied power inverters are implemented this way.
- mark-r 11y agoThe cheapest way to ensure those things is to do it in software, which is how we get into this situation in the first place. Modularization will cost more, and what manufacturer is going to willingly sign up for that?
- noir_lord 11y agoThe one made too by FCC regulations. Companies would do lots of things if they could get away with it, as someone commented on here a while back (and I wish I could find it) "It's a corporation of course you can expect it to shit on the kitchen floor"
- atmosx 11y agoI recently bought an ADSL modem/router TP-Link 8970 (or something). The thing is awesome, except for that fact that it doesn't support OpenVPN... Supports PPTP or IPSec. Now if only, I could install OpenWRT on it. Since OpenWRT makes ROUNDS around every custom software I've seen on low-end ADSL modem/routers makes me wonder why on earth companies don't just ship OpenWRT and get over with it?
- mindslight 11y agoTheir firmware is the feature they're selling you. The hardware is generic and without their wonderful firmware, they'd be competing solely on price. This is what the skinjobs think, at least. BTW, openvpn performance sucks eggs on the processors used in consumer routers.
- wmf 11y agoAFAIK most lower-end routers have pretty generic firmware (with their logo added) as well. Maybe paying a no-name firmware sweatshop to tweak some reference firmware is cheaper than tweaking OpenWhatever.
- mindslight 11y agoDo they even have enough memory for OpenWRT? Maybe DD-WRT. At the low end, I'd think the chipset manufacturer would do most of the software work, then the device manufacturer just cosmetically tweaks the reference.
- wmf 11y agoAh, memories of the bad old days when the VxWorks license fee was less than the cost of the extra RAM necessary to run Linux.
- wlesieutre 11y agoFeels like the same problem that a lot of Android handsets have had. "Look! We added value by making the product worse!"
- chatmasta 11y agoAs a skeptic I have to wonder whether Google lobbied for this prior to their OnHub release. I'm also expecting Apple to announce some sort of router on Sep 9 to go with HomeKit + AppleTV. Both parties would have a vested interest in locking down the open source router ecosystem.
- tzs 11y agoIf you are not using a Google or Apple router, I don't see why they would care if you are running third party firmware on your router. If you are using a Google or Apple router and they do not want you to replace the firmware on it they could use signed firmware already. They would not need to have the FCC tell them that they have to use signed firmware in order to use signed firmware. If there was some way to use third party firmware on a non-Google, non-Apple router in order to interact with Google or Apple routers in a way that compromises something Google or Apple are trying to do, then maybe Google or Apple would have an interest in trying to stop that...but this would not be an effective way to stop that. It would not be effective because people would simply build their own routers using a PC with a wifi card to attack the Google or Apple routers, instead of attacking by replacing firmware on stand-alone consumer routers with firmware that supports that attack. I can't think of anything else. Did you have some other vested interest in mind?
- function_seven 11y agoI think parent meant competition. If all other choices are super-exploitable crapware-laden routers, then Google's and Apple's devices become that much more valuable. Not sure effects on the market would be that great, but I can see how it would benefit GOOG/AAPL to reduce choices.
- noir_lord 11y agoOth hand no way in hell would I consider putting a Google device in the most important spot on my network, My distrust of them grows by the day.
- jMyles 11y agoThis appears to me to be a clear-cut example of prior restraint, if common sense standards of free speech are to be applied to source code.
- cpncrunch 11y agoI'm not sure that is a valid analogy. They're not trying to prevent "free speech", just stop idiots who don't know what they're doing from interfering with aircraft weather radar. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10137739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10137739 edit please read the background before downvoting, and you'll see what I mean. Also, there is no loss of freedom here. As long as your radio software is separate from the router software, there is no issue at all.
- jMyles 11y agoI certainly didn't downvote you. I do, however, disagree. In this particular case, it seems that the method employed to "stop idiots who don't know what they're doing from interfering with aircraft weather radar" is to infringe on everyone's right both to run software without the government assessing its content and to broadcast signals regardless of their content.
- cpncrunch 11y agoAssuming that the radio and router are separate and only the radio firmware is locked down, is there any way that the NSA could snoop on the content? Or are you saying you want to have the right to reprogram the radio?
- quotemstr 11y agoI'd be happy [1] with locked-down radio firmware if it could talk only to the radio. One big problem is that coprocessors in embedded systems often have full access to the memory bus, meaning there's no way to stop a trojan in the closed and locked radio firmware from reading and modifying any bit of system memory, which can include your personal data and encryption keys. [1] Although I'd hope that it'd still be possible to buy or build a general-purpose SDR.
- nickysielicki 11y agoIf you're in the US please take 5 minutes and do something about this. This is a big deal. Make a phone call about this: > 1 (888) 225-5322 Send an email: > Chairman Tom Wheeler: Tom.Wheeler@fcc.gov > Commissioner Mignon Clyburn: Mignon.Clyburn@fcc.gov > Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel: Jessica.Rosenworcel@fcc.gov > Commissioner Ajit Pai: Ajit.Pai@fcc.gov > Commissioner Michael O’Rielly: Mike.O'Rielly@fcc.gov Write a letter: > Federal Communications Commission > 445 12th Street, SW > Washington, DC 20554 source: https://www.fcc.gov/contact-us https://www.fcc.gov/contact-us
- uuuusername 11y agoPLEASE put in comments on this proceeding, everyone! WE NEED YOUR HELP!
- cpncrunch 11y agoFirst I would advise you to understand why this is being done. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10137739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10137739
- nickysielicki 11y agoI don't understand your/his reasoning here. * People don't enable DFS and they mess up radar for Airports. * ~20 reported incidents, people are fined ~$25k and stop. * Therefore we must make it illegal to change the firmware on wireless devices. Only 20 cases? $25k fines!? Why can't we continue to solve this problem like this? The hobbyists flashing their devices with OpenWRT and then making a conscious decision to override defaults (upon which OpenWRT will warn you about legality) are a rare breed. Those that foolishly do this are being fined heavily. I just don't understand the jump.
- cpncrunch 11y agoI guess they just don't want to make it too easy to do this, given the serious consequences.
- Sephr 11y agoDoes this affect phones that can be used as hotspots? If so, you can say goodbye to any remaining Android phones that come with unlocked bootloaders, such as the Nexus series.
- jamiesonbecker 11y agoSubmit a formal comment on the Federal Register: https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2015/08/06/2015-18402/equipment-authorization-and-electronic-labeling-for-wireless-devices https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2015/08/06/2015-184...
- dec0dedab0de 11y agoI don't know too much about these things, but isn't it possible to have some sort of hardware filter on the antenna to block illegal channels?
- colechristensen 11y agoThey release physical hardware which is capable of operating in many regions and firmware which is specific to a region. It's straightforward to create hardware which is physically incapable of violating licensure, but it is also expensive. That's not the point though, it's becoming a serious problem with technology enabling restrictions which weren't possible in the past and which now threaten free society through a well intentioned but misguided bureaucracy. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." There's a certain unalienable right which is being encroached more and more – the right of ownership, the freedom to tinker. That is more specifically, everyone should be capable of learning and executing complete control over the things they own. DRM, locked firmwares, license agreements – all of these things are a serious and existing threat to your freedom.
- dogma1138 11y agoAsshats brought it on themselves, don't commit felonies and mess with regulatory bodies... There is no reason in the world to run Wifi on outlawed channels other than pure selfishness to have a better connection and not be on the same base band or expansion bands as your neighbors. The FCC even allowed people to run low power transmitters on the restricted channels 12/13 but stated that channel 14 is banned and asked nicely for people not to dick around with it.[1] https://transition.fcc.gov/oet/ea/presentations/files/oct05/Unlicensed_Devices_JD.pdf https://transition.fcc.gov/oet/ea/presentations/files/oct05/... Now it doesn't matter why is that channel blocked, it's not a licensed channel in many countries (as they are used for air traffic landing assist systems, radars, medical equipment such as panic buttons for elderly and disabled people, alarms etc...) and it seems like it is causing interference other wise the FCC would not be chasing this issue again after relaxing the regulations for restricted channels and asking the users to behave. It's a felony to tweak your Wifi beyond specs, it causes issues and regulatory bodies react, OpenWRT and DD-WRT could've saved them selves the trouble by developing a mechanism to respect local regulation own their own. Also as it seems people panic too quickly what will happen is the same thing with the radio's on mobile SOC's each region will have it's own channels enabled, you'll still be able to use DD-WRT or w/e you want in the end you won't be able to play with the Wifi settings out of spec which there's no reason in the world for you to be able to in the 1st place.
- bbrazil 11y ago> It's a felony to tweak your Wifi beyond specs, it causes issues and regulatory bodies react, OpenWRT and DD-WRT could've saved them selves the trouble by developing a mechanism to respect local regulation own their own. The Linux kernel has such mechanisms and they're not trivial to bypass. You'd as a user have to go out of your way to do so, and the devs are not in favour of users doing this. (source: I had to do so to workaround a card that was configured for completely the wrong regulatory domain).
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago> Asshats brought it on themselves I've been using Tomato firmware for years, and I never did anything illegal with it. How did I bring it on myself exactly? > you'll still be able to use DD-WRT or w/e you want RTFA: Vendors will have to “describe in detail how the device is protected from “flashing” and the installation of third-party firmware such as DD-WRT” As far as I know, all of the issues at hand could be solved with baked-in hardware lockouts without otherwise affecting custom firmware, but that's not what the FCC is demanding.