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Except part of the "solution" is going to be mandating signed firmware, which means you won't be able to actually own your router anymore. TP-Link has already
by ck2 11y ago
Except part of the "solution" is going to be mandating signed firmware, which means you won't be able to actually own your router anymore.
TP-Link has already fallen victim to this.
You can take openwrt, ddwrt, tomato and padavan from my cold dead hands.
- banku_brougham 11y agocan you provide a link showing how to use these things? (Openwrt...etc) I want to but networking is such a dark place for me.
- icebraining 11y agohttps://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/start https://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/start
- ck2 11y agoOpenWRT is plain vanilla and probably a hard place to start if you don't understand terminology, etc. Try Tomato for a friendlier newbie environment. Google your router to see what alternate firmwares are available for it and never buy a new router unless you know one of the alternatives is available for it because most factory firmware is full of holes.
- wtallis 11y agoWhat do you find friendlier about Tomato than modern OpenWRT? The latter has more features, but from what I recall of Tomato it really wasn't much different about how it presented the core functionality.
- ck2 11y agoYou can't be suggesting OpenWRT is newbie-friendly. Powerful and flexible, yes. Newbie or casual-user friendly, no. If Tomato is not enough, then DD-WRT, but Tomato being more stripped down becomes more newbie friendly by default.
- wtallis 11y agoWhat specific features or capabilities do you think a current version of OpenWRT does in a less newbie-friendly way than Tomato or DD-WRT? They've all got web interfaces that present a status summary upon log-in and have pages for configuring different categories of settings (WAN, WiFi, port forwarding, etc.). Unless you think Tomato's default color scheme makes it vastly more usable, you'll have to point to something specific. (And while it's been a while since I last used DD-WRT, my experience was that it had a multitude of options that were non-functional or incorrectly documented, so I'll need some pretty strong convincing that it's got any advantage over OpenWRT.)
- wmf 11y agoIMO alternative firmware projects make things better for the 0.1% while throwing the other 99.9% of humanity under the bus. If we want the Internet as a whole to be more secure, not just our own home networks, we need to solve crappy vendor firmware somehow and not signing updates is unlikely to help. OnHub has a good tradeoff with signed auto-updates by default and a developer mode switch for hackers.
- throwaway2048 11y agosigned updates also don't prevent exploits from running.
- userbinator 11y agoIronically, the only way to get custom firmware onto a system that uses code-signing and other forms of security is often to find such an exploit. (See iOS jailbreaking, Android rooting, console homebrew, etc.)
- izacus 11y agoHuh, how does your ability to update firmware yourself "throw other humanity under the bus"? Can you explain that reasoning further?
- tjohns 11y agoThe problem is asking other users to install DD-WRT/Tomato/OpenWRT in order to get a secure device. That's not something I would reasonably expect my parents to know about or do. Consumer networking hardware needs to be secure out of the box, and automatically keep itself updated without any end-user intervention. Installing alternate firmware should be an option, but it shouldn't be necessary.
- syntheticnature 11y agoHeck, as someone who used to run alternative firmware they seem to be making it harder for all. After a few years of a forced all-in-one device (thanks, Windstream), I went looking again... things do not seem as organized. Wiki pages argue with each other and point to forum posts without indicating which piece of information is most relevant, and in general things only look stable for routers that are at least two years old, with newer routers having regular, massive regressions. I get enough of JTAG at work, thanks.
- proctor 11y agothere is a page[0] that I helped put together that maintains a list of the current more powerful routers that support OpenWrt and DD-WRT. Sort by Performance, Value, or Price. Criteria for getting on the list is Performance first, and then Value. [0] http://rooftopbazaar.com/routerfirmware/ http://rooftopbazaar.com/routerfirmware/
- pasbesoin 11y agoI wish I could say, "Paging Bunny." Or some such. I hope the pieces and supply chain are not locked up to the point that there is no way around.
- wmf 11y agoIt's now possible to crowdfund a router and it's not even that expensive. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/turris-omnia-hi-performance-open-source-router#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/turris-omnia-hi-performan...
- pjc50 11y agoThis is what mjg is arguing here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11163741 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11163741 We need both integrity protection for firmware and user control of the signing keys.
- seanp2k2 11y agoAnd ideally a system that makes it possible for people who don't know how public key auth works to securely update the firmware on their devices.
- fnordfnordfnord 11y agoIs anyone developing Tomato anymore? I used to really like that one.
- ymse 11y agoShibbys builds are still going strong (though two months since last update). http://tomato.groov.pl http://tomato.groov.pl I used Tomato (various flavours, including this one) for a long time until finally succumbing to OpenWRT. The web interface is lacking compared to Tomato, but in return you get a recent LTS kernel built with the latest GNU toolchain and a superb package manager + collection. OpenWRTs CLI config system is very slick, the web interface just doesn't yet hook into all possible settings (which may vary between devices).
- fnordfnordfnord 11y agoThanks!