These Linksys routers are likely transmitting cleartext passwords (www.techspot.com)

submitted 1 month ago by BrikoX@lemmy.zip to c/technology@lemmy.zip

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Two Linksys mesh routers send sensitive information to an Amazon server without any encryption, according to Belgian consumer organization Testaankoop. The practice could leave passwords, wireless network...

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[-] cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 1 month ago

This is one of the reasons why you should always use open source firmware on your router.

[+] Auzy@beehaw.org -7 points 1 month ago

Unless you're going to audit the source yourself. Not really.

I think people are surprised in general by how few people actually touch source code

It's more a reason to not use sh***y consumer wifi

[-] PlexSheep@infosec.pub 9 points 1 month ago

That's not correct.

Even if you don't read the whole thing now, you might want to check something out later, even if it's just a small thing.
Being open source is a matter of transparency. If it's not OSS, it has something to hide. Often that's not too bad, but being OSS builds trust.
Even if you're going to use it without thinking at all, someone else can look at the code and do something about it if it's bad code.

There is more, but it's late

[-] Auzy@beehaw.org 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

What have you checked out or audited specifically?

In the open source projects I started and worked with, nobody really helped. In fact, one of ours was a fork of a commercial open source project. Ironically enough, if they were closed source they would have survived Longer...

DevFS was a core Linux component. And nobody wanted to maintain it, so it got depreciated before a replacement was even available (udev eventually, but it was totally unusable at the time).

Are you using openbsd? That is fully audited apparently

Everyone talks about looking at the code, but in practice, it's disappointing most people don't. I wish this wasn't true.

The best Access points on the market are not fully open source I'm fairly sure. But the best Access points have a lot of developers who ensure qa on your behalf

What matters is the resources put towards it. A lot of high end routers have full service contracts that guarantee security and support.

Just because something is open source, especially if it's embedded hardware, doesn't mean it's easy to debug and recompile.

[-] PlexSheep@infosec.pub 4 points 1 month ago

You of course have some valid points, but I think they don't just apply to OSS, but software in general. Software is often unmaintained, has bugs, and nobody really cares for it, that is true for both OSS and closed source.

Being OSS is always a boon in my opinion, as it enables people to take a look at it if they want to. There is no audit-duty, people can (within the license) do whatever they want, and that is a very good thing.

I didn't really audit OSS, but that's not the only boon OSS offers. For example, I wrote a rust tool that did something similar to tee so I just went and pulled up the source code of GNU tee. No problem (besides that C code feels so messy)

Or another example: I develop a lot of rust. In rust, there are a lot of dependencies that offer very nice functionalities. I was developing a library to help make developing cli tools easier, and wanted to make a module for easily creating a repl (think bash but very dumb). There was a repl project that did some things I wanted, so it was no problem to just go and look at their source to see howbI voukd do my things.

As a result, I stay convinced that OSS is more trustworthy and more approachable for users and developers (Note that this effect is offset by gazillions of corporate money for closed source).

[-] eRac@lemmings.world 1 points 1 month ago

They are predicting the pixel layout of the user's screen, prerendering the passwords, and then transmitting them as images?!

That's commitment to crisp text rendering!

[-] Auzy@beehaw.org -1 points 1 month ago

Nobody serious uses Linksys for anything.

If you are, you need to consider moving to a proper brand

[-] remotelove@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 month ago

DD-WRT was practically born from Linksys routers, btw.

If you are actually "serious", you would be building your own access points and not focused on brands.

[-] Auzy@beehaw.org 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The only professional use of ddwrt I've seen is Macca's guest access.... It's an awesome project.. but...

If you're serious, you actually use enterprise grade products with guaranteed support. You don't build your own APs. Literally, no company I know does that 😂 .

Perfect example of why oss doesn't guarantee anything, is devFS which was a core component of Linux was depreciated before a replacement even existed. There were no maintainers despite it being critical to Linux

There are major core Linux projects which are being maintained by only 1 or 2 people.

Parts of xorg also only have 1 or 2 people in the world who understand the code apparently.

I've never seen Linksys installed at any high density jobs . And I don't think I will.

They've been sold to 3 different companies in 20 years. It's generally not a good indicator if network companies are happy to sell their child companies to competitors lol

But yes, the wrt54g 20+ years ago was a stroke of genius. It wasn't the best router available, but it definitely changed the hobbyist market

this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2024

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