3 ms·
It's an interesting challenge because the device is nominally "under ISP control" but any device located in a customer's home is under the physical control of t
by sounds 2y ago
It's an interesting challenge because the device is nominally "under ISP control" but any device located in a customer's home is under the physical control of the customer. The mistrust between the ISP and the customer leads to "trusted" devices where the firmware, including the backup, can be overwritten by the ISP, but then cannot recover if it gets corrupted. And believe me, the corrupt firmware scenario happens a lot due to incompetence.
This is getting attention because it wasn't incompetence this time.
But how does blank, unprovisioned equipment discover a path to its provisioning server? Especially in light of the new "trusted" push, this is an arms race in a market segment such as routers where there isn't any money for high end solutions - only the cheapest option is even considered.
tl;dr: a social and economic problem, likely can't be fixed with a purely technical solution
- sidewndr46 2y agoThis was years ago, but I remember getting cable service activated somewhere in Florida with Bright House. I handed the cable guy some ancient motorola cable modem I had found at a discount store. The guy took one look at it and said "look dude, if you hacked this thing to get around bandwidth caps it is your problem if you get caught". I guess apparently that particular modem was pretty easy to modify
- Scoundreller 2y agoMaybe it already was modified!
- cuu508 2y agoTechnical solution: customer treats ISP's modem/router as untrusted, and daisy chains their own router after it. Neither malware nor ISP's shenanigans can access the inner network.
- Scoundreller 2y agoThat’s what I do. Also makes changing providers straightforward (though last time I needed to set up some custom VLAN stuff on my router but didn’t have to fumble with any wifi config).