- cross-posted to:
- hardware@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- hardware@lemmy.world
TP-link is reportedly being investigated over national security concerns linked to vulnerabilities in its very popular routers.
You must log in or # to comment.
We have this really great approach to security where we allow the adversary to infiltrate a huge portion of our infrastructure for years and at many different levels, and then we say “hm, maybe we shouldn’t be allowing this?”
Almost like it has less to do with security and more to do with securitization of economic competition.
Well its just natural for coubtries to do this at this point when they dont like each other
In an off topic, I often prefer a open hardware router like raspberry pi router as it gives me control! For me it’s safer to use as documentation is open like pfsense and openwrt.
I don’t understand why doesn’t Raspberry Pi make a router when they’ve ideas like the 500 🤦🏻♂️
There’s already OpenWrt for Pi. All you need is to add a switch or a USB ethernet adapter.
I mean as a direct product that average people can directly buy instead of TP-Link.
OpenWRT did
If anyone at the user level is concerned about backdoors, the OpenWrt One comes straight from AliExpress. 😂 With that said there’s probably magnitudes less risk of something nefarious going on with a low volume machine built by Banana Pi than TP-Link.
Along with Turris Omnia
And now am asking Raspberry Pi itself like GL.iNet have~
The US government is just upset because it’s harder to place back doors in non-US hardware. It’s a US national security concern to NOT have US back doors in devices.
That’s not all. The US government exists to look out for the interests of wealthy americans.
Every dollar spent on a different nation is a dollar that could’ve been spent on them, in their eyes.
American business owners know that China is competitive because they can provide better products at cheaper prices. Americans would need to invest in making their products better or lower prices to compete with China. Both result in lower profits for owners.
This is why we will never stop seeing FUD against products that offer us a better deal than those looking to exploit us further. It’s more profitable to convince useful idiots to “buy american” than it is to actually sell them products worth buying at competitive prices.
Countries like China, Germany, Taiwan, etc. have competitive exports because they have direct and indirect subsidies to their manufacturing sectors at the expense of their household sector.
Some of these subsidies include a weak currency relative to their economy, weakened labour laws, preferential interest rates, capital controls, labour movement restrictions, etc.
China uses all of these. Germany primarily used the Hartz “reforms” which basically decoupled wage growth from productivity and GDP growth.
The reduces the household share of national income and they cannot afford to consume the production of their manufacturing sector and therefore the excess production must be exported.
And China probably also installs backdoors
Running OpenWRT is generally a good idea. I’m not gonna lie and say it’s easy to setup. But it’s worth it.
I’d personally hope they just force open sourcing their firmwares if they want to stay in the market. I really like my Omada stuff, ubiquiti is just a tough pill to swallow on price.
They (FCC) forced firmwares being signed so nobody can install their own on the off chance it unlocks TX power or frequencies not allowed by FCC.
Can’t say I’ve ever seen an example of signed firmware that didn’t exist to further exploit the working class.
You’ve never used Linux?
Signed firmware just means you can prove a given key was used to sign something. Most Linux distributions sign their packages so you know one of the trusted keys from the maintainers was used to sign the packages (and yes, this includes firmware), which prevents a man-in-the-middle from modifying packages.
The only problem I have with signed firmware is if there’s no way to change the acceptable keys. Signing itself is an important security feature, its only problematic if the user can’t upload their own signed packages.
Requiring signed firmware is just a lock to keep poors out.
It’s Never used for consumers benefit, not once, not ever.
Signed firmware doesn’t cost anything, so I’m not sure what you mean by “keep the poors out.” Signed firmware has a very valid use case for preventing supply chain attacks. The only time I have an issue with it if there’s no way to make your own signed package or bypass the requirement.
It costs the ability to flash your own firmware.
The only time I have an issue with it if there’s no way to make your own signed package or bypass the requirement.
That’s 100% of all signed firmware implementations.
These checks are usually at the application level, so flashing via telnet/SSH still works. It’s generally not like TPM where the boot will be blocked if the signature doesn’t match, and in many cases, systems with those protections have a way to set your own keys (e.g. like with GrapheneOS on Pixel phones).
I don’t think you know what firmware is.
Maybe you don’t. Here’s a list of firmware packages in Debian. Signing for router packages follows the same logic as those Debian packages.
I rest my case.
They should undo this and just prosecute people who abuse the firmware
I honestly like the GL.iNet approach in terms of software which is kinda like Android.
I recently bought their Flint 2 (GL-MT6000) based on multiple recommendations online when looking for a router that supports OpenWRT. That’s preinstalled, with AdGuard Home and WireGuard VPN on top of it. I’m looking forward to set it up and play around with it.
What do you exactly mean when you describe their approach in software as Android-like? That it’s easy to install services in OpenWRT?
It’s OpenWRT as you said but with their own skin and added features instead of completely spinning it off from the ground just because one has a feature to add as an idea like the native AdGuard Home home you mentioned, this makes sure it’s either continually supported because of OpenWRT or anyone can install the vanilla OpenWRT if support is no longer carried by the manufacturer.
So who tf is left who makes good wireless routers? When I bought my tp-link it was top rated and recommended by everyone.
Yeah, most of those sites end up recommending the same brands over and over, which causes people to buy them and talk about them. I don’t want to say, a scam, but it feels… scummy.
They never talk about other brands like Ubiquiti. Which isn’t a perfect brand either, but I’ve never seen it compared. Or even a low end Netgate. It’s always TP-Link, Asus, Netgear, Linksys, or D-Link… the same brands that have existed for the last 20 years offering crap. But Ubiquiti, Hawking, Belkin, etc. you basically never see.
I just googled it. Top 3 sites were wired.com, pcmag.com, and reddit.com/r/HomeNetworking (with a top comment pointing to cnet.com and nytime.com). And if you guessed TP-Link was recommended no.1 on all of them, you’d be right. To me, with the absolute garbage reviews on all of them, and the stupidity small sample size, it feels like TP-Link just buys the reviews because customers will read the reviews and buy their garbage. There was a mattress company that did something very similar years ago. The deck is stacked against customers.
And especially scummy, is TP-Link offers some cheaply made, highly marked up garbage that underperforms. They also are notorious for not delivering consistent updates to their routers. Maybe one or two updates, and they certainly don’t care if all the features don’t work. Just looked up one I bought from them before I wised up, the Archer C5400. 2 updates on a $200 router, that came highly recommended. Checked the v2, and also just 2 updates. I doubt it’ll ever see another.
On top of their terrible support and pathetic hardware… they also moved to a cloud SaaS config model. They want you to sign up for an account and use TP-Link Tether. Here’s something written up 3 years ago on [reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/tbthjj/psa_newer_tplink_routers_send_all_your_web/}
My general suggestion for most people who want something that just works and is easy to use… the Ubiquiti Dream router isn’t a bad option. It’s not the best, but if you don’t want to really get into how networking works, it’s a good option.
I’m a techie, but I’m past the point where I want to tinker and mess with my stuff for hours or days to get it up and running. I’m sure the enterprise grade options are better, but I just want some plug and play option that at least allows me access to the more detailed stuff if needed. This looks like a solid recommend.
Here’s a recommendation: GL•iNet
Oh hell no! Those are complete trash. Especially the cellular gateways they make.
I gave up on TP-Link. I will never purchase any consumer router from them again. Little to no updates, connection issues that were made worse with an update, features REMOVED with an update, settings wouldn’t always stick, which results in a factory reset to get it to do anything. WPA3 just doesn’t work. It even would “mysteriously” turn it’s DHCP server back on, no matter how many times I turned it off, when it was in AP mode. Friend had the same model and most of the same issues.
I have had better luck with the other brands, but I feel like most of them suck or cost way more than they should.
Just get an enterprise grade router (e.g. Mikrotik) and a separate AP (e.g. Ubiquiti).
“just”
That’s not an option for most people. They’re either not savvy enough to manage everything at that level or don’t care to and they will likely spend more money doing it this way.
They actually made a great suggestion with mikrotik…granted I come from a networking background but those can be as simple as you want or as complex as you need. Their products are resilient and prices are a chefs kiss for what you get. Now if they had recommended just some juniper or cisco gear I’d agree with you but mikrotik makes great products at great prices.
Exactly. They have three interface options:
- Quick Set - similar to most residential routers
- Web Fig (what I use) - access to more features, closer to OpenWRT
- Terminal - what pros use
If you only have one Ubiquiti AP, you can use their app (simple) and if you have more, you can use their cloud SW. I use their local SW because I like control, but it’s not for everyone (need to maintain a Mongo DB).
Total cost is about $200 ($70-80 for a decent router, $100 for an AP), but you could probably go down to $150 if you’re okay with more basic gear.
And yet, grandpa or that weird uncle everyone has could just pop onto amazon and buy a normal tp-link router on sale right now for all of about $40 that has wifi built in.
Anyone who’s tech-savvy should put themselves into the shoes of their non-tech-savvy parents or grandparents in a situation where they don’t have you around to help. That’s who the main audience is; not someone willing to go even slightly down into the stack with this idea.
What audience? I’m talking about people here on Lemmy reading this article.
Well, they’re more likely to put OpenWRT in a Raspberry Pi tbf~
Why not? They have a super user-friendly “Quick Set” UI that’s literally one screen with:
- WAN port and IP
- LAN network (subnet)
- VPN (optional)
WiFi is a little more complicated since it’s a separate unit, but Ubiquitis instructions are extremely straightforward if you use their app (single AP only) or their cloud management service.
I’m no IT pro, and I got it set up quickly. I’ve since added a bunch more to my setup and learned a ton, but basic setup is pretty approachable. If you know enough to understand the issues in the article, you’ll be 100% fine.
Now consider your average parent or grandparent and tell me that they’ll be 100% fine on their own and actually want to do this. Most would not. Often-times, the marketing itself is enough to scare these folks off of that kind of tech. They worry about things you probably don’t and don’t generally want to worry. Hell, even the fact that you’d have to purchase two completely separate items to get what you can currently purchase in a single unit is enough to not get many of them to do it.
I’m talking to the average Lemmy user, who could certainly set this up for themselves or their parents/grandparents. If they run some cable, it can be a much better setup than any consumer grade router, but it’ll still be competitive if you just leave it on the floor like a regular router (I do).
Ubiquiti
Overpriced trash, the opposite of Mikrotik.
What do you prefer instead?
Someone in the comment section posted a good question. Which specific routers that TP-Link makes are the issue?
Is it all routers that they make or is this just because they are selling inexpensive routers that have become a large part of the US market?
Does someone have an article that isn’t biased one way or the other that gives a list of effected routers ?
They don’t care. They want to ban TP-Link as a company, routers are just an excuse.
This is the same people that keep blocking US gdpr legislation, so we know for a fact they don’t care about us, they just care about not being able to spy themselves.
maybe the us should try actually investing in their own infrastructure instead of just relying on rabid xenophobia and sinophobia
Makes sense.
Insert meme: Throws out of the window~
So they’re going to flush the TP?
Damn, maybe we should have some kind of privacy law that could have prevented this behavior from ever being allowed in the first place.
Why so late ? Of course this should have been zone before. It’s a question of sécurité.
So many MSPs are gonna panic if tplink is banned
