<p><pre><code> The FCC maintains a list of equipment and services (Covered List)
that have been determined to “pose an unacceptable risk to the
national security
Recently, malicious state and non-state sponsored cyber attackers
have increasingly leveraged the vulnerabilities in small and home
office routers produced abroad to carry out direct attacks against
American civilians in their homes.
</code></pre>
Vulnerabilities have nothing to do with country of manufacture. They have always been due to manufacturers' crap security practices. Security experts have been trying to call attention to this problem for 2 decades.<p>Manufacturers have never had to care about security because no Gov agency would ever mandate secure firmware. This includes the FCC which license their devices and the FTC who (until recently) had the direct mandate to protect consumers.<p>Our most recent step backward was to gut those agencies of any ability to provide consumer oversight. All they they can do now is craft protectionist policies that favor campaign donors.<p>The US has a bazillion devices with crap security because we set ourselves up for this.
> Manufacturers have never had to care about security because no Gov agency would ever mandate secure firmware.<p>The problem is that "secure firmware" is a relativistic statement. You ship something with no known bugs and then someone finds one.<p>What you need is not a government mandate for infallibility, it's updates. But then vendors want to stop issuing them after 3 years, meanwhile many consumers will keep using the device for 15. And "require longer support" doesn't fix it because many of the vendors will go out of business.<p>What you need is the ability for consumers to replace the firmware.<p>That solves the problem in three ways. First, when the company goes out of business you can still put a supported third party firmware on the device. Second, you can do that <i>immediately</i>, because the open source firmwares have a better security record than the OEMs to begin with. And third, then the device is running a widely used open source firmware instead of a custom device-specific proprietary black box, which makes it easier for the government or anyone else who is so inclined to find vulnerabilities and patch them.
> What you need is not a government mandate for infallibility, it's updates<p>So, we don't need an electrical code to enforce correct wiring. We just need a kind soul driving by our house to notice the company who built our house wired it up wrong. Then that kind person can inform the company of the bad wiring.<p>And if the company <i>agrees</i> it's their wiring at fault, we can wait 3 months for a fix. Then the next month another kind soul finds more bad wiring. And we just have to hope there is an army of kind strangers out there checking every building built by every company. And hope in the meantime that the building doesn't burn down.<p>Meanwhile, people have to live with bad wiring for years, that could have been completely prevented to begin with, by an electrician following the electrical code we all already agree on.
> So, we don't need an electrical code to enforce correct wiring.<p>For an analogy to work, its underlying elements should have a relation to the target. Your analogy is not in the same universe. For electrical work, there is a baseline of materials and practices which is known to produce acceptable results if adhered to. For software, there isn't. (Don't tell me about the Space Shuttle. Consumer software doesn't cost tens of millions and isn't written with dedicated teams over the decades.)
Routers have to follow the same standards as other electrical appliances.<p>Those standards aren’t related to the functionality or security of the router.
I mean, if you could download an update that would fix the wiring in your house, it would be much less critical that the initial installer got it right. (Still much more important than your router, though; it doesn't stop being an electrocution hazard during the un-updated period.)<p>Trying to make analogies from software to hardware will always fall down on that point. If you want to argue that there should be stricter security & correctness requirements for routers, maybe look more toward "here is how people actually treat them in practice" with regard to ignoring updates...?
> What you need is the ability for consumers to replace the firmware.<p>I don't think that's enough. Most people aren't going to replace the firmware on their device with an open source replacement made by someone else. Now if the firmware was required to be open source, and automatic updates could be seamlessly switched over to a non-profit or government agency in the event of the company going out of business, you might have something. But there would be a lot of details to work out.
I have a PC hooked up to my TV in my living room that has been running the latest version of Kubuntu for over 18 years now. It has had many upgrades in that time but it's still the same basic hardware: A CPU, some memory, USB ports, a video card, and an ethernet port on the back.<p>That "genericness" is what's missing in the router space. <i>Literally</i> every consumer router that comes out has some super proprietary design that's meant to be replaced in its entirety in 3-4 years. Many can run Linux, sure, but how many have a replaceable/upgradable board? How many are like a PC where you can install whatever OS you want?<p>Sure, you can forcibly flash a new OS (e.g. OpenWRT) but <i>that is a hack</i>. The company <i>lets</i> you do that because they figure they'll get a bit more market share out of their products if they don't lock the firmware so much. They key point remains, however: They're not <i>just</i> hardware—even though they should be!<p>The world of consumer routers needs a PC-like architecture change. You can buy routers from companies like Banana Pi and Microtik like this but they're not marketed towards every-day consumers. Mostly because they're considered "too premium" and require too much expertise to setup.<p>I think there's a huge hole in the market for consumer-minded routers that run hardware like the Banana Pi R4 (which I have). When you buy it, you get the board <i>and nothing else</i>. It's up to you to get a case and install an OS on it (with OpenWRT, Debian, and Ubuntu being the normal options).<p>We need something like the Framework laptop for routers. Not from a, "it has interchangeable parts" perspective but from a marketing perspective. <i>Normal people</i> are buying Framework laptops because geeky friends and colleagues recommend them and they're not <i>that</i> much more expensive/troublesome than say, a cheap Acer/Asus laptop.
If you make something internet commected you must provide lifetime warranty for security. no import or sales sor even leases) until you have in escrow the money to pay for them.<p>i will allow sunsetting and removing ipv4 after 2020 (that is more that 5 years ago)
> And "require longer support" doesn't fix it because many of the vendors will go out of business.<p>Which is not a real issue in practice. It's like arguing that warranty doesn't matter because the vendor might go out of business.
The concept of community firmware seems like a huge cop-out that allows companies to externalize costs. And it probably won't help security because 99% of devices will never get the third-party firmware installed anyway.
If they were trying to save costs they would ship the community firmware on the device to begin with because then they wouldn't have to write and maintain their own. The community <i>welcomes them</i> to externalize those costs onto the people with better incentives to improve the software.<p>What they're actually trying to do is obsolete the devices faster because then they won't add new protocols or other software-only features to older devices so you have to buy a new one, or only expose features in more expensive models that the less expensive hardware would also be capable of doing. Which is all the more reason for us to not have that.<p>And if they were required to allow anyone to replace the firmware then you would get companies reflashing and selling them that way from the store because the free firmware has more advertisable features. There's a reason you can go to major PC OEMs and pick between Windows, Linux and "don't even install one" and the reason is that if you give customers a choice, they generally don't want their software to be made by the OEM.
It could be part of dissolution of the company to mandate community firmware. But it depends on their licenses…<p>Anyhow, this is a common enough practice. Many companies that provide infrastructure type software and sell to Fortune 500 companies often have a clause whereby they deliver their software to their customers if the shut down.
Congratulations, your router now costs $700!
The government obviously cares less about citizens running firmware China can hack than it does about citizens potentially running firmware the government can't hack.
Why not just put the onus on ISPs? 99% of users lease their router from their ISP. If updates stop after three years, looks like you're getting a complimentary service appointment to get a new router.
> <i>But then vendors want to stop issuing them after 3 years</i><p>Tough shit. You provide updates for the mandated amount of time, or you lose access to the market. No warnings, you're just done.<p>> <i>And "require longer support" doesn't fix it because many of the vendors will go out of business.</i><p>Source code escrow plus a bond. The bond is set at a level where a third party can pay engineers to maintain the software and distribute updates for the remainder of the mandated support period. And as time passes with documented active support, the bond requirements for that device go down until the end of the support period.<p>Requiring that the customer be allowed to replace the firmware is essential, I agree, but not for this reason. That requirement, by itself, just externalizes the support costs onto open source communities. Companies that sell this sort of hardware need to put up the resources, up front, irrevocably, to ensure the cost of software maintenance is covered for the entire period.<p>Personally I don't buy consumer router hardware that I can't immediately flash OpenWRT on, but that option is not suitable for the general public.
How does this help? 99% of the population aren't technically minded enough. Most people just buy a wifi router, plug it in (maybe having read the instructions) and that's it. They have neither the skills nor the inclination to update firmware.<p>The real problem is: assuming that firmware can be updated, how do you run a nationwide update programme overcoming a population that doesn't really care or have the skills to do it.<p>Vehicle safety standards (mandated annual safety checks like the UK MoT test) is the closest analogy I can think of - in the UK you can't insure your car without a valid MoT. If you were serious, then maybe tying ISP access to updated router firmware would be the way to go.
> What you need is the ability for consumers to replace the firmware.<p>> That solves the problem in three ways.<p>That <i>alleviates</i> the problem, but definitely doesn't <i>solve</i> it. Updates are still required, and most people will never update devices they don't directly interact with.
Auto-update obviously.
Which introduces new security risks, but more importantly, the consumer has to configure the device to use open source firmware, and set up auto updates, unless the device is being auto updated by the device manufacturer and forces all of their customers to switch to the new firmware, which seems very unlikely.
How? The device phones home to the manufacturer's servers to get new updates. Manufacturer goes out of business, servers get shut down. How does it know where to get updates now?
> Manufacturer goes out of business, servers get shut down.<p>Continue your chain of reasoning: DNS name becomes unmaintained, gets grabbed by open source / foundation / gov agency, pushes open source firmware update.<p>Same thing happens today with botnet C&C servers.
That’s a technical solution to a business and incentives problem.<p>How does one ensure the support for the devices is funded?
Somebody has to pay for the support. There is no free meal.<p>Enterprise must be able to pay for support for as long as they use devices. Solved.<p>I can only think of requiring the devices to be serviceable, as you say. The absolute only way I can think of charging the consumers, ie the owners, is to charge a tax on internet connections. Then the government would pay somehow vulnerability hunters working along patchers, who can oversee each other.<p>Consumers are tricky: if you include support in the sale price, the company will grab the money and run in 3 or 5 years; and some companies will sell cheaper because they know they won't provide support.
"You ship something with no known bugs and then someone finds one."<p>You managed to say that with a straight face!<p>Let's keep this ... non partisan. You might recall that many vendors have decided to embed static creds in firmware and only bother patch them out when caught out.<p>How on earth is embedded creds in any way: "no known bugs"?<p>I think we are on the same side (absolutely) but please don't allow the buggers any credibility!
> How on earth is embedded creds in any way: "no known bugs"?<p>You misunderstand how organizational knowledge works. You see, it doesn't.<p>Some embeds the credentials, someone else ships the product. The first person doesn't even necessarily still work there at that point.<p>Remember that time NASA sent a Mars orbiter to Mars and then immediately crashed it because some of them were using pounds and the others newtons? Literally rocket scientists.<p>The best we know how to do here is to keep the incentives aligned so the people who suffer the consequences of something can do something about it. And in this case the people who suffer the consequences are the consumers, not the company that may have already ceased to exist, so we need to give the consumers a good way to fix it.
>The problem is that "secure firmware" is a relativistic statement.<p>No it isn't, software formally verified to EAL7 is guaranteed to be secure.
I would like to introduce you to Spectre and Rowhammer.
Sure, you formally verified that the software confirms to the specification, but how are you going to prove that the <i>specification</i> is correct?
You're being sarcastic, right? The entire concept of "guaranteed to be secure" is a fantasy.<p>Even EAL7 can't <i>guarantee</i> anything. It can only say that the tools used for verification didn't find anything wrong. I'm not saying the tools are garbage, but the tools were made by humans, and humans are fallible.
That’s the ironic part.<p>Plenty of consumer-grade devices have had very lax security settings or backdoors baked in for purposes of “troubleshooting” and recovery assistance. It’s never been limited to foreign-made devices.<p>Security has never been part of the review process. The only time any agency has really cared is when encryption is involved, and that’s just been the FBI wanting it to be neutered so they can have their own backdoors.
> no Gov agency would ever mandate secure firmware<p>Interestingly, Europe is about to try this: the Cyber Resilience Act is going to become obligatory for all sold digital products (hardware & software) by the end of 2027, with a bunch of strict minimum requirements: no hardcoded default passwords, must check for known vulnerabilities in components/dependencies, encryption for data at rest, automatic security updates by default (which must be separate from functionality updates), etc.<p>Remains to be seen whether this'll help, but good to see somebody have a go at fixing this.
Encrypting data at rest is security theatre right? Unless consumers control the keys (which they generally dont want to), the keys will have to be accessible by the system storing the data. So if the system is compromised so are the keys? Like I cannot see the security benefits from encrypting data at rest in a non E2E system.
> This includes the FCC which license their devices<p>The FCC licenses devices to the extent that devices can cause spurious transmissions in the radio spectrum. It’s not a general consumer protection agency. Computer security also is outside the mandate of the FTC, which exists to protect consumers from anticompetitive conduct and unfair business practices, not crappy products.
I could see why someone might be confused in the Mayer of what the FCC can regulate, considering that it regulates the content of television and radio broadcasts and somehow regulates cable TV providers, despite the use of wired connections to customers, instead of radio transmissions.
So if a company uses as part of its marketing for a product the phrase "advanced security, privacy, and connectivity for homes of every shape and size" and then is later found to have lied about the "advanced security" and "privacy" part of their marketing by shipping firmware with security bugs, does that not now fall under the "deceptive" category of the "unfair, deceptive and fraudulent business practices" part of the FTC's mission?<p>Sounds like it does to me. Also you're forgetting the part where the FTC under a prior administration either banned DLINK from selling in the US or heavily fined them for selling routers in the US that they knew were running insecure, buggy firmware.<p>(both quotes were taken verbatim from first, Netgear's US website, and secondly the Bureau of Consumer Protections' section of the FTC's website)
I know it's the norm to criticize the admin, but I don't think its what they're saying. I think they're saying "they know of the vulns they leave in and only fix them after it's been exploited by their states".<p>Not that any consumer router is super nice and safe, honestly, you're better off making your own these days.
IMO they should have a choice between open source that can be updated out of band from the manufacturer or assuming direct liability for issues for the product's life.
I suppose foreign routers might not have convenient mechanisms for the government to access and control them at will, hence the "unacceptable risk to the national security".
> Vulnerabilities have nothing to do with country of manufacture. They have always been due to manufacturers' crap security practices.<p>Sorry but this is merely a convenient excuse. Source: I have hard evidence of a Chinese IoT device where crap security practices were later leveraged by the same company to inject exploit code. It's called plausible deniability and it's foolish to tell me it's a coincidence.<p>You're not going to convince me that a foreign state actor pressuring a company to include a backdoor wouldn't disguise it as a "whoopsie, our crap code lol" as opposed to adding in the open with a disclaimer on it.<p>It's all closed source firmware. Even the GPL packages from most consumer router vendors are loaded with binary blobs. Tell me I should trust it.
Are you saying that other manufacturers don't do this?
If US manufacturers (or manufacturers in allied countries) do this, legal avenues exist to hold those manufacturers accountable. Not so with China.<p>(That is not to say that the FCC change will move the needle on the underlying issue of router security; as some of the ancestor comments have said, lax security practices are common industry-wide, irrespective of country of development/manufacture.)
The Snowden leak showed that Cisco routers had been altered to enable surveillance [1]. Whether or not the manufacturer is complicit, or how the alteration is performed is ultimately irrelevant to the end user. Ultimately, the only people that got in legal trouble for this were Snowden and people who provided service to him.<p>[1]: <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade-factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa...</a>
Actually it's entirely relevant how, in the context of this conversation.<p>Here, we're discussing product as shipped, not product intercepted and modified. We're discussing if products are shipped secure or not.<p>The Snowden disclosures are important, but not relevant in this case.
> legal avenues exist to hold those manufacturers accountable<p>Maybe in theory. I think the practical chance of enforcing anything meaningful through those legal avenues against a US manufacturer is not meaningfully higher than the chance of doing so against a Chinese manufacturer, so it doesn't make sense to treat them differently on these grounds.
When was the last time American intelligence agencies were held accountable?<p>Literally your own Congress is not even allowed to review their budget! Not that any US politician even WANTS to know.
> <i>legal avenues exist to hold those manufacturers accountable</i><p>Oh, sweet summer child. Disclaiming these possible avenues of liability is the main goal of clickwrap "terms of service".
Are you asking me if I have the master list of naughty and nice router manufacturers?<p>No, I don't have it but you may check with Santa Claus.
What was the company, and what did they inject?
And who hasn't seen American software companies where crap security practices are later leveraged by the same company to run exploits? It's of course always phrased in Orwellian terms of business practices, terms of service, "security", etc but we can still call a spade a spade.
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This part of the press release seems pretty crucial:<p>> <i>Producers of consumer-grade routers that receive Conditional Approval from DoW or DHS can continue to receive FCC equipment authorizations.</i><p>In other words, foreign-made consumer routers are banned by default. But if you are a manufacturer, you can apply to get unbanned ("Conditional Approval").<p>In the FAQ (<a href="https://www.fcc.gov/faqs-recent-updates-fcc-covered-list-regarding-routers-produced-foreign-countries" rel="nofollow">https://www.fcc.gov/faqs-recent-updates-fcc-covered-list-reg...</a>), they even include guidance on how to apply: <a href="https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/Guidance-for-Conditional-Approvals-Submissions0326.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/Guidance-for-Conditi...</a><p>If you (a manufacturer) apply, they want information regarding corporate location, jursidiction, and ownership. They want a bill of materials with country of origin and a justification for why any foreign-sourced components can't be domestic. They want information about who provides software and updates. And they want to hear your plan to increase US domestic manufacturing and progress toward that goal.<p>So, foreign-made consumer routers can still be sold, but they are going to look at them with a fine-tooth comb, and they are going to use FCC approval as leverage to try to increase domestic manufacturing.
> foreign-made consumer routers can still be sold, but they are going to look at them with a fine-tooth comb, and they are going to use FCC approval as leverage to try to increase domestic manufacturing<p>That is not what's going to happen. What's going to happen is that anyone coughing up payola to the current executive in chief's people will get approved, and anyone that doesn't will remain blocked. This practice is currently widespread, in the form of tariffs.
We're going to keep seeing this in all kinds of industries throughout the next three or so years: "Your products are banned or your country is tariffed, but if you pay enough in bribes, er I mean undergo our approval process, then you'll be exempt."
to me the greatest damage the trump admin is doing is bringing out corruption in the open.<p>if there's really one thing that destroys countries is corruption. being originally from a 3rd world country - I have seen it. now the US is heading towards the same path.<p>having worked in the IOT industry before - I can tell even domestic manufactures will be forced to pay bribes soon cloaked in 'state secrets' - there's already export laws etc - but now they will be forced to pay for compliance e.g maybe donating the president's vanity project.
Bonus points if the ‘approval’ process exempts them from liability if misused - and there is no actual checking done as part of approval.
That descriptions already fits the payola model. It's almost never about directly handing money to a politician. That's illegal, so it's not worth doing when there's legal ways to do it. Instead, payola usually involves regulations requiring using some kind of product or certification, then the organizations that sell the product or perform the certification contribute to the politicians.<p>Also, the biggest benefactors of payola aren't the politicians, it's the rent seekers, that is the businesses already in place that want to prevent competition. Because of this, they usually directly contribute to the politicians that promise to restrict the path to doing business.<p>For example, if you want a newest-generation extremely-efficient air conditioner in the US, you won't be able to buy it and even if you could, you wouldn't be able to get anyone to install it. Any given model of air conditioners needs to be on an approved list to be sold in the US, and the installer needs to be on an approved list, too. This means that by the time an air conditioner makes it onto the list, it's already old. Also, installers can require you buy it from them, and almost all do, so by the time time an installer on the list has it for sale, it's even older than that. Ironically this is all enabled by the EPA, on the auspices that they are ensuring that it's energy inefficient, when in reality they are preserving the market for the older, more expensive, and inefficient models.
> That descriptions already fits the payola model.<p>The old payola model. This new model encompasses the old one and adds a neat layer of outright politician bribery on top.
Trump made $4B last year. It's open and direct bribery at this point. He's said he plans to hide behind qualified immunity and pardons for people he pays (with tax money) to break the law on his behalf.<p>Dario (CEO of Anthropic) said the DoW contract violations and threats were direct retaliation for not paying Trump "campaign" money. Later, he was forced to apologize for speaking the truth.
> If you (a manufacturer) apply, they want information regarding corporate location, jursidiction, and ownership. They want a bill of materials with country of origin and a justification for why any foreign-sourced components can't be domestic. They want information about who provides software and updates. And they want to hear your plan to increase US domestic manufacturing and progress toward that goal.<p>Wow NGL this sounds great if you ignore the reality that it'll be used as a partisan backdoor to enriching the administration.
> So, foreign-made consumer routers can still be sold, but they are going to look at them with a fine-tooth comb, and they are going to use FCC approval as leverage to try to increase domestic manufacturing.<p>You're assuming a non-partisan technocratic process, which this administration has amply shown is neither capable nor willing to provide. This requirement becomes another opportunity for Pay-to-Play, either in cash or quid pro quo, to the government directly (see, e.g., NVidia and AMD export allowances) or to Trump's inner circle (see, e.g., crypto venture regulation, merger approvals).
This is the problem with erosion of norms. We’ve all known for decades that consumer routers have shit security. We’ve all known about the risk of implants or intentional backdoors in the supply chain. And now when the FCC appears to be finally doing something about it, there’s a massive cloud of mistrust hanging over the whole idea.
The FCC ain’t doing nothing about it. If anyone thinks they are, then I have an amazing US made router to sell them.
If they cared about security, US-made routers wouldn't be exempt.
The mistrust comes from those doing it, and the clearly corrupt ways they are operating. The maggot movement is basically rooted in a lot of very real frustrations from very real longstanding problems, but the only thing it offers as solutions is performative vice signalling.<p>People who care about the problems of digital security are not going to lean into the idea of simply banning devices based on where they were manufactured. Rather they would work at general standards and solutions to actually solve the problems - things like untying the markets for hardware/firmware/services, requiring firmware source escrow, mandating LAN protocols and controllers so every single IoT device isn't backhauling to its own mothership, and so on.<p>Likewise people who care about domestic manufacturing first and foremost are not going to champion applying steep blanket tariffs two decades after all of that industry has already left, or using regulatory agencies to shake down manufacturers for unrelated concessions.
> <i>You're assuming a non-partisan technocratic process</i><p>No, of course I'm not assuming that. That's not the administration's pattern of behavior, so it would be a crazy assumption.<p>I agree it'll be abused. I just didn't feel it necessary to state the obvious.
I’m reading this as “tariffs didn’t work, so now we need different pain levers to wield against trading partners to bully them at the expense of consumers”.
Any router made by a company that "donates" (bribes) to Trump's "ballroom" or other vanity projects will get approved. Irrespective of anything else. This is just another grift.
Does it occurs to someone that in this time of encryption backdoor and such, this is also a good starting point to another mass surveillance system ? Mandate US manufacturers to embed remote access for the use of the government, then as you've made those routers the only ones authorized on the us soil (let's not be foolish about that approval process, it will be a smoke screen) you basically have a backdoor to every citizen home.<p>Yes china routers are a liability, but free trade and open market ensure at least one thing that's essential : no single state has surveillance capability on its entire population
My sister in laws xfinity router / app has a new feature banner for “detecting motion in your house with WiFi for no additional cost”<p>I took a screenshot to share if anyone is interested
This is why users need to have an american router, chinese router, and russian router, all wired in series. That way no one spy branch has full backdoor access through the chain ;-)
Yes, that's what is happening here, except it goes beyond surveillance.<p>This is about full domestic control of the internet. For both ingress and egress.<p>Remember how Iran likely murdered thousands of protestors a few months ago, but we don't actually know? They want to be able to do that here.
If we wanted secure products, we wouldn't ban devices. We'd mandate they open their firmware to audits.
Not all of the functionality is in the firmware though. You can put stuff in the silicon itself that allows backdoors.<p>It's very difficult to inspect a laid out chip for nefarious elements - there's too much of it to do manually. Having a secure supply chain <i>is</i> probably the best way to prevent that happening.<p>Which is not to say that I support this rule - it sounds like another import weapon trump can swing against people who aren't his friends.
It'd be great if open firmware could be commercially viable. Finding a business model is hard.<p>The OpenWRT One [1] sponsored by the Software Conservancy [2] and manufactured by Banana Pi [3] works lovely.<p>[1] <a href="https://openwrt.org/toh/openwrt/one" rel="nofollow">https://openwrt.org/toh/openwrt/one</a><p>[2] <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/activities/openwrt-one.html" rel="nofollow">https://sfconservancy.org/activities/openwrt-one.html</a><p>[3] <a href="https://docs.banana-pi.org/en/OpenWRT-One/BananaPi_OpenWRT-One" rel="nofollow">https://docs.banana-pi.org/en/OpenWRT-One/BananaPi_OpenWRT-O...</a>
The business model is simple: Sell nice hardware at a premium, then sponsor and upstream improvements to OpenWRT.<p>If the software is an important differentiator (arguably, it is for things like Ubiquiti, but clearly it is not for most consumer routers), then release the patches under the Business Source License with a 3-5 year sunset back to BSD / Apache / GPL.
Open to audits doesn't mean free software, it just means visible source. The business model for selling routers with auditable firmware is selling routers.
And the public doesn't have to audit it. The govt already audits/inspects/validates plenty of sensitive physical products, typically through 3rd party industry associations. You don't get to peek inside, but people signing NDAs do.<p>Even if this wasn't done, at the very least they must publish their software testing procedures, the way UL, ETL, and CSA require to certify devices for the US power grid. (<a href="https://www.komaspec.com/about-us/blog/ul-etl-csa-certification-process/" rel="nofollow">https://www.komaspec.com/about-us/blog/ul-etl-csa-certificat...</a>) They can also do black box testing.<p>But ideally they would actually inspect the software to ensure its design is correct. Otherwise vibe-coded apps with swiss cheese code will be running critical infrastructure and nobody will know until it's too late.
Just declare that any router that can be flashed to OpenWRT without loss of functionality is allowed to be imported.
There's also Turris from cz.nic [1]. Technically they use a fork of OpenWRT with some convenience features like auto-updates, although it looks like you can run OpenWRT on (some of their routers?) if you wanted to [2].<p>[1] <a href="https://www.turris.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.turris.com</a><p>[2] <a href="https://openwrt.org/toh/turris/turris_omnia" rel="nofollow">https://openwrt.org/toh/turris/turris_omnia</a>
Open firmware would become commercially viable when IP is abolished
How do you see firmware becoming more open without copyright exactly?
I'm no fan of imaginary property, but you're going to have to lay out your reasoning here. Firmware security is such crap precisely because most hardware manufacturers see it as nothing but a cost center they wish they could avoid.<p>The difficulty of installing OpenWRT or Linux in general on hardware comes from that hardware not being documented, or not having straightforward APIs like BIOS/EFI.<p>Or for some devices, community distributions that dubiously remix manufacturer-supplied binaries are available. But we generally see that as soon as the manufacturer stops their updates, the community versions start lagging behind as well.
> not having straightforward APIs like BIOS/EFI.<p>Oh, no, not this again!<p>> But we generally see that as soon as the manufacturer stops their updates, the community versions start lagging behind as well.<p>Care to demonstrate that?<p>The reason OpenWrt abandoned most routers was<p>1) insufficient flash space in the kernel partition, or insufficient total flash space in no-USB, no-SPI routers,<p>2) unwillingness to repartition flash because it breaks compatibility with official firmware (as if anyone installing OpenWrt would care),<p>3) insufficient RAM to run newer kernels<p>and, <i>most importantly</i>,<p>4) unwillingness to support older kernels like DD-WRT does.
You will first probably need Congress to legislate away the long standing prohibitions against offering (easily) user-modifiable RF devices on the market.<p>Self ownership and full 'right to repair' has carve-outs in the FCC's regulations in the name of limiting unintentional broadcasting/radiation. Maybe a challenge to those would survive in the post-Chevron environment. I wouldn't expect any Congress in the last 25 years to pass a law which would go against the incumbent telecom lobbyist interests though, and I'd expect such a hole if it did hit case law, to get 'patched' fairly quickly.<p>About the only way to really solve that would be to embarrass vendors enough to open their moats.
I dunno, I'm pretty big on FOSS but I don't think you would <i>need</i> that to improve. Requiring that the firmware have its source code available to audit doesn't mean that users can replace it. AFAIK you could, today, with no legal changes, have a vendor release 100% of the code under eg. a MIT license while also making the device refuse to run firmware not signed with their keys. Researchers could poke at it to find bugs, and FCC regulations wouldn't be touched. (Note: IANAL, so feel free to point out if I'm wrong about that)<p>(To be clear, I don't think that's good enough; at a minimum I think there should be a wifi card that does refuse modifications and a main application processor that is 100% user <i>controlled</i> so that they can actually fix problems without needing the vendor to help, but I think it's useful to point out that auditing code doesn't require being able to install it)
<i>> AFAIK you could, today, with no legal changes, have a vendor release 100% of the code under eg. a MIT license while also making the device refuse to run firmware not signed with their keys.</i><p>This is already the case today with many embedded devices. They have secure boot enabled so even if the vendor releases the GPL source code (big if), you can't do anything because the device will only boot the vendor's signed firmware.<p><i>> at a minimum I think there should be a wifi card that does refuse modifications and a main application processor that is 100% user controlled so that they can actually fix problems without needing the vendor to help</i><p>This is already possible. The RF components frequently have a signed firmware blob that is verified on load. There is no reason but planned obsolescence and greed keeping the application processor locked to running the vendor's signed code.
problem is: how do you prove the firmware in the flash chip matches source? And I do not mean me, with a disassembler and a pi pico to read out the flash chip. I mean the 70-yaer-old corner shop owner that buys this router to provide free WiFi for customers?
> how do you prove the firmware in the flash chip matches source?<p>Trusted, qualified independent experts: Ala Underwriters Laboratories.
A trusted website that compiles it from source and a way for you to go to a webpage and flash from there automatically. The FPV community does that all the time with a set of websites for their ESC, flight controllers, radio, all open source. You can add signatures etc but just a trusted website goes a long way vs a random blob preinstalled
That proves that the one they checked, had the correct firmware. It does not prove that the one from the next batch that you bought did. We are all technical people here we and understand that there isn’t really an easy way to do this that a random non-technical person could actually understand and use.
not to mention even on the bananapi you gotta trust mediatek.
There's no solution to that other than having knowledge and researching the code/device yourself. You can pick apart modern Linux/busybox based IoTs fairly quickly, so effort needed is not really a huge issue.<p>Maybe trusted community of people could do it for everyone, but there's currently all kinds of potential legal trouble brewing in that approach. Complete and public reverse engineering of every aspect of any device would have to be made completely legal, so that people could freely publish all artifacts extracted from a device and produced during reverse engineering and collaborate on them without any fear of repercussions. Also HW manufacturers would have to be prohibited from NDAing documentation for SoCs, etc.<p>Side benefit would be that this would also serve as a documentation for freeing the device and developing alternative firmwares with modernized sw/reduced attack surface.
Considering this is after Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024), it will be interesting to see if this holds up to judicial scrutiny.<p>The FCC's power just got substantially nerfed, and "we've decided to slow lane all foreign-made routers" feels like that may have been beaten on the old, higher, standard. Let alone the new one that gives the FCC almost no power.
> all consumer-grade routers produced in foreign countries<p>Are there even consumer-grade routers that are produced in the USA...?
Guys from heise.de [1] haven't found any.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.heise.de/en/news/USA-bans-all-new-routers-for-consumers-11222049.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.heise.de/en/news/USA-bans-all-new-routers-for-co...</a>
But we can still buy old models:<p>> As outlined below, today’s action does not impact a consumer’s continued use of routers they previously acquired. Nor does it prevent retailers from continuing to sell, import, or market router models approved previously through the FCC’s equipment authorization process. By operation of the FCC’s Covered List rules, the restrictions imposed today apply to new device models.<p>I’m sure plenty of US factories are capable of importing boxes that look like routers but are actually just switches (because the router firmware is missing) and re-flashing them here…
Right? Even enterprise routers, e.g. Cisco, are not produced in USA.
You can theoretically use any computer as a router. I've used a Raspberry Pi as a router through a single NIC with VLANs.
<i>> consumer-grade routers that are produced in the USA</i><p>Starlink?
I believe they make satellite components not consumer hardware in the US
X-The Everything router, now with 'Mecha Hitler' built in!
Time for the made in USA tin can and a string.
Hey, let's not undersell America's high-tech manufacturing capability. We could easily produce morse code keys and copper wire, for a price of course.
<i>Assembled</i> in the US, the tin comes from Indonesia.
Qualcomm is a US company right? I've worked on a few WiFi router devices and their chips are pretty popular in that segment. But WiFi is not a priority for Qualcomm (in fact they actively sabotage it for their more profitable 5G segment), and software is even less of a priority. So you had "parsing 802.11 TLVs in the kernel with obvious stack overflows" quality code drops.<p>(Which is why it's a bit ironic I saw the Google Fiber guy post on X about how they always had TPM^TM "security" in their routers; thats cool, but the drivers you used still made them "general purpose computing over the air" devices)
Are there any consumer-grade routers that aren't produced in Taiwan?
I have a theory that the FCC bureaucracy desperately wants to extend its remit to regulate the internet, and this is just one more attempt.<p>Previous example: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37392676">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37392676</a>
For the device manufacturers, the obvious solution is to sell them as general-purpose computers. You can already get devices that had started out as Raspberry Pi clones but evolved into excellent DIY network appliances, with multiple high-speed Ethernet and SSD ports that are great for running a NAS, proxy server, firewall, or all three, and more. Rarely do they have good WiFi, but if manufacturers start selling hardware that has been traditionally sold as a locked-down routers or access points, but include a generic Linux installation, it'll compete will well with the aforementioned hardware.
Companies want to sell what consumers want to buy. But the average consumer doesn't want a general-purpose computer for this job; they instead want to buy a "router".<p>If companies market the devices as something other than "routers" then consumers will not buy them for routing duty.<p>(Meanwhile, the non-average people who want to use general-purpose computers as homespun router/NAS/do-all boxes are already aware of how this all works...and many of us have been doing it this way for decades. (Often, this happens alongside dedicated access points that do have good wifi radios.))
The average consumer doesn't want a router full stop. Their ISP hands them an all-in-one modem+router+switch+WAP box and they just accept that the internet lives inside of it.<p>I have roommates who are engineers and I had to explain to them the difference between Wi-fi access point and LAN when I replaces our wireless router with a router + 3 APs.
> But the average consumer doesn't want a general-purpose computer for this job; they instead want to buy a "router".<p>So start your own company called usa router co, and sell some random arm board with a preinstalled router image... the end user won't know the difference.
Oh, for sure. That's easy enough; it's what GL.inet does: They sell router-shaped computers that run a skinned openwrt -- out of the box. (There's been some questions about GPL compliance over the years, but that's a separate issue.)<p>And superficially, it sounds like a straight-forward thing for me or anyone else to do here in the states, but things get murky quickly: What differentiates a foreign-made router from a US-made router?<p>Can I get some flunky push the button in his studio apartment in Idaho to flash open (but globally-sourced!) firmware onto some boxes from Alibaba (in exchange for startup promises) and call that good enough?<p>Do I have to spin up the boards here in the States? And the ICs, too? How about the passive jelly-bean parts like the capacitors and resistors and the antennas?<p>What of the rest of the device? Like, things such as the housing, the packaging, the power supply, and the included ethernet cable: Do I need to source those from domestic US production or is it OK if they're foreign-made components?<p>Do I have to produce the software in the States? (If so, Linux is right out.)<p>Where is the line drawn? How is the line shaped?
Yeah, it does sound like this should be focused on verifying firmware, including all future updates. If a Chinese company builds the router at a US Foxconn site, it is still the same situation.<p>If worried about supply chain and inside jobs, I worry more about the IoT widgets I have. They are already inside the LAN, can access the internet, etc.<p>Anyway, bribes aside, this is probably just a talking point and not much actually changes.
And exactly how many consumer routers are <i>not</i> foreign made?
What exactly does "produced" mean in this context? That the final assembly was done here, software was written here, PCB was assembled here, SoCs and ICs wwre manufactured here, or something else? Regardless, while consumer routers are 9 of 10 times insecure garbage, it's hard to think of any that aren't manufactured outside the US.
will this be like "product of USA" potatoes?, where a canadian truck full of bags of potatoes backs up to a special border facility, and the bagged potatoes are put on a conveyor, dumped out, conveyed........, and then rebagged,thereby becoming american product!
As someone who works with networking (consumer prosumer enterprise everything) the problem is far more complex than : make it open.<p>Manufacturers can support devices for long but it costs money which the consumers / businesses aren’t willing to pay or value. Cybersecurity is a joke and the general consensus is : we will pay for things as and when there is a fire. We don’t put a price on prevention because we can’t really show it to shareholders how we profited from not being attacked since we blocked those. So we create an arbitrary certification and pass things according to it. This certification doesn’t say anything about firmware. But if we do get attacked then we can convince the shareholders to spend money on better equipment this financial year and then not bother until the next time we have a problem.<p>Some of these certifications focus on what the devices allow you to do (like acls and firewalls) and see if they pass these tests. But actually looking at the firmware and finding vulnerabilities is not in scope.
I'd gladly buy an American-made router if one existed!
If war breaks out you better bet a bunch of equipment will turn off.<p>Numerous papers showing the ability to easily map indoors areas with WiFi (including occupancy) it’s a liability.<p>There will be excuses “tariffs” etc but I heard a few have gotten calls from three letter agencies coyly telling you to improve your systems.<p>It’s a chance to refresh the product line! (of course at the worst time when mem prices are bleed you dry high)
Occupancy sensing is a FEATURE on comcast home routers. It notifies you if someone is moving in the house and probably sells the occupancy data also. Makes location data from other sources far more valuable and verifiable.
"Will turn off"... are you claiming that consumer-grade routers have a secret backdoor kill switch that one government or another can use to turn them off? That's a little hard to believe (even when they are security Swiss cheese).
Seeing the operational capability of Mossad in Iran means if desired, one should assume the US and China are equally capable.<p>The US didn’t make a space force to please the ego, it was likely to occur eventually. They aren’t spending all their time wargaming a moon invasion lol<p>Logistically, hacking tons of different model routers is not feasible. It would be more useful to yank the power grid.. which can be accomplished with missiles or software.
I'm not sure what you're suggesting, exactly, but we seem to have escalated from "kill the consumer-grade WiFi routers" to "kill the entire US power grid" in one post? If anyone did that, with missiles or software, things are going to escalate very quickly from there.
Prediction: there will appear new "Made in the USA" routers that differ from some Chinese model only by the label. Already the case in Russia for e.g. powerbanks.
I would be more impressed if they would ban all enterprise routers manufactured in China. I have had to continuously patch and meticulously mitigate severe vulnerabilities and bugs in Cisco, Dell, HPE, Extreme, Arista routers, switches, fabrics, and others. These are all manufactured in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and probably elsewhere in the Greater China region... Actually I take it all back. I wish they would just ban companies from shipping bad code and sanction them for causing millions of hours of required labor to ensure their manufacturing defects do not harm businesses and their customers. Thank you for your attention to my chatter.
So... What are the options now for American consumers? What brands are left and available?
The escalation path is probably: have some relationship to an entity that doesn't care about you -> make sure that entity becomes your enemy -> the enemy now has an incentive to see you as an enemy -> you must now be afraid of your new enemy.
Incredibly obvious domestic surveillance scheme. Quite creepy
Does anyone even have a list of US produced routers? Like does installing OpenWRT or OPNSense or VyOS matter?<p>I can’t think of a complete start to finish, OS to mosfets, computer that is 100% manufactured in the United States.
So router prices in the US will go up a lot, great!
This is terrible, perhaps the worst thing this administration has done (which is an incredibly high bar.)<p>Because it provides a pathway to full government control of the internet.<p>Content that demonizes the current administration's enemies will become easier to find. Evidence of their crimes will vanish.<p>When they murder someone in the street, fewer people will find out about it, and those that do will be more likely to hear the government's side of the story.<p>Mobile networks are already owned by the billionaires, and they've shown plenty of willingness to shape traffic for their interests.<p>Managing this kind of information at scale is an incredible challenge, but one that LLMs are very well suited for.<p>Even if you are confident the current administration doesn't have the competence or longevity to exploit this (as I mostly am,) we can easily predict future admins of either party will happily make use of these capabilities.<p>Bad for the US, but also very bad for the world, because it will make it much easier to manufacture consent for or hide future international crimes committed by the government.<p>We've excused the complete loss of traditional journalism with a reliance on the Internet instead. Not anymore.<p>Can savvy individuals work around it, of course. But the general public will treat them like conspiracy theorists, because all they will see is content that reinforces the administration.<p>The technical discussions in here sound like: "silly Caligula, his horse won't be able to sign his name to cast a vote in the Senate."
Aren’t all routers manufactured in foreign countries? Cisco are assembled in China as far as I know.
Will this impact the Mono Gateway[0]?<p>[0] <a href="https://mono.si/" rel="nofollow">https://mono.si/</a>
It looks like it probably won't matter. The site says you can preorder a DevKit "Shipping between June and September 2025."<p>The fact that they haven't updated that webpage with new information since October 1st 2025 seems to indicate bad news...
I preordered one, I got it, and I sold it. They are active on Discord. Why did I sell it? The shortcomings of the platform made me realize I should just go with UI, despite my reservations about the company.
The founder puts regular updates on his YouTube channel: <a href="https://youtu.be/RS2igvW3DIk" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/RS2igvW3DIk</a><p>Shortly put, they're going through hardware startup woes but will probably make it out the other end just fine.
It's hard to tell considering there is absolutely no company/ownership information on the site, but a .si (Slovenia) domain coupled with EUR being an accepted currency has me thinking they're Europe-based, and therefore foreign-made.<p>... at the same time, I don't think I'd send $100 to a site with no contact/ownership/company info to begin with.
my instinct is open source is part of the answer. the market monetizes with differentiation on the open source base, support, hardware, etc. vibrant enough market = the foss is secure (always a relative term) and continues to evolve, partially paid for by the companies who are monetizing
Wouldn’t you purchase an American made router if you could?<p>I switched away from Omada to Ubiquiti, because of TP Link’s problems.
Ask HN: Is there a list of preferred routers for security?
I don't think the hardware matters so much as the firmware, which is solved by installing OpenWRT on anything that supports it.<p>If wireless security is the concern, maybe other people here know better but I don't believe anything convenient will be "secure" in the strongest sense of the word.
Nest
The Spirit of this law __must__ also now apply to SoCs produced by non-allied nations that feature USFCC-approved RF microelectronics, such as __ESP32__ Here's to hoping USFCC gets around to also reflecting this in the Letters of this law sooner, rather than later.<p>[cue <a href="https://youtu.be/EnIm71jRb_o" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/EnIm71jRb_o</a>]
Are there consumer grade routers made in the US?
Because of this, I'm going to plan my next network upgrade based on open source hardware like Banana Pi. My setup is based on WiFi 7 so this might not apply for a few years. From my understanding, the hardware from proprietary manufacturers is sufficiently advanced to do some advanced surveillance and spyware, whereas previous generations didn't require advanced processing to achieve fiber optic speeds. Back to the original statement, it's clear that the threat of surveillance exists.<p>Personally, I don't make the distinction between foreign and domestically produced routers in America. In fact, I trust foreign produced routers more because the likelihood that they can act upon their surveillance is significantly lower than the current American regime's oppressive and malicious tactics. Therefore, open source routers provides enough transparency to effectively eliminate spyware threats from all angles while being compliant.<p>I'm especially excited about the Banana Pi because of the transparency and potential of modular upgrades. Whenever there's a network issue, I have to consider whether the manufacturer (American or not) is doing something nefarious. With a Pi based router, I have much more peace of mind with network debugging issues.
IMHO an underrated comment. The CCP isn't going to break down my door in the middle of the night, but I'm sure I'm on lists at the FBI and ATF just for my political org memberships alone. I think a foreign actor is more likely to use compromised hardware to create service interruptions and general chaos in the event they are attacked by our government, not come put me in a gulag.<p>The only thing I'm missing right now that would be a nice to have is a wifi card so I can ditch my access point. My hardware isn't open source by any means, but my reliance on non-free networking code is minimal.
If the world were to truly come to those stakes, I would just forgo wireless entirely. Running Cat5/6 through the walls is barely an inconvenience, and cell phones are compromised by design, needing to communicate with a cell tower.
There are several vendors of small computers usable as routers/firewalls and who provide complete hardware documentation, including schematics and PCB layout. Some of them also provide an extensive list of accessories, including cases with good passive cooling.<p>Besides BananaPi, there are e.g. ODROID (Hardkernel from South Korea), FriendlyElec, Radxa.
I'm sure people will get right on buying American-made routers.
What is a router?<p>Really, do they have a definition?
Device that connects multiple networks? Layer 3 of the OSI model? Consumer ones tend to have more than that, but the more specific definition would work fine.<p>Yeah conceivably you could use this to ban any network device that is capable of routing between interfaces, so lots of switches with new firmware could do it, often terribly, as well as PCs with multiple interfaces. But its probably going to involve intention.
The definition is at the bottom of this document <a href="https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/NSD-Routers0326.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/NSD-Routers0326.pdf</a><p>...which in turn refers to <a href="https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2024/NIST.IR.8425A.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2024/NIST.IR.8425A.pdf</a>
Good question for devices that ship with multiple network interfaces, multiple video outputs, no RAM and no software.
If multiple network interfaces defines a router, then every cell phone is one, because every cell phone has a cellular and Wifi interface, and is a router in hotspot mode. Three interfaces if you count USB which can also be a network interface (hotspot works over USB in both Windows and Linux) and four if Bluetooth PAN is still a thing.
All routers ship with software.<p>(edit: and RAM!)<p>(edit: and NOT multiple video outputs!!)
If I were a nation worried about the health and security of routers, I'd be making sure that open source has a place.<p>But largely thanks to FCC demands, the list of router hardware that can run open source operating systems such as OpenWRT has dwindled to a trickle. There's very precious few wifi 7 / BE systems available, and only a few wifi 6! it's ghastly. <a href="https://toh.openwrt.org/?features=wifi_be" rel="nofollow">https://toh.openwrt.org/?features=wifi_be</a> <a href="https://toh.openwrt.org/?features=wifi_ax" rel="nofollow">https://toh.openwrt.org/?features=wifi_ax</a><p>To me, this is a deeply dangerous situation for the state & for the population, where it is nearly impossible for consumers and businesses to purchase gear that they can secure. Where we are at the mercy of what is on the market, and no actual securing of our own can occur.<p>The FCC claimed in 2015 they were not trying to forbid open source systems, but the additional compliance demands they have made unsupportable unsecurable devices the default state: the FCC mandated companies make sure the users dont have freedom, make sure the wifi performance is locked down, and the most obvious path to that end is to just lock out the user entirely. Open source isn't outlawed, but the FCC turned a good working amazing open source movement into something that is incredibly rare and hard to do. The FCC assurances (<a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/11/free-router-software-not-crosshairs-fcc-clarifies" rel="nofollow">https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/11/free-router-software-n...</a>) have not proven true (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11122966">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11122966</a>): everything has gotten worse for security & availability (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11122966">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11122966</a>).
Does the router ban really <i>only</i> pertain to consumer-grade networking devices?<p>> <i>For the purpose of this determination, the term “Routers” is defined by National Institute of Science and Technology’s Internal Report 8425A to include consumer-grade networking devices that are primarily intended for residential use and can be installed by the customer. Routers forward data packets, most commonly Internet Protocol (IP) packets, between networked systems.</i> ¹<p>> <i>A “consumer-grade router” is a router intended for residential use and can be installed by the customer. Routers forward data packets, most commonly Internet Protocol (IP) packets, between networked systems. Throughout this document, the term “router” is used as a shorthand for “consumer-grade router.”</i> ²<p>There doesn't seem to be a general ban for foreign-made <i>professional</i> routers, just for some Chinese manufacturers, right³?<p>Oh, and what does "produced by foreign countries" even mean? I couldn't find any definition. Is this meant to be the country of final assembly? Would importing a Chinese router and the flashing the firmware in the USA be sufficient to be exempt? Where is the line drawn usually?<p>¹) <a href="https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/NSD-Routers0326.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/NSD-Routers0326.pdf</a><p>²) <a href="https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2024/NIST.IR.8425A.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2024/NIST.IR.8425A.pdf</a><p>³) <a href="https://www.fcc.gov/supplychain/coveredlist" rel="nofollow">https://www.fcc.gov/supplychain/coveredlist</a>
Given everything else going on in America right now I'm not sure I'd trust an American made router more than any other.<p>Is this just another mass surveillance operation?
If you actually read the notice, it exempts models that have been approved. So this just seems to require approvals by DOH or DHS ,": Routers^ produced in a foreign country, except routers which have been granted a Conditional Approval by DoW or DHS." I take this to mean it is just adding security approvals for this type of thing to DOw and DHS. It is not a ban of all future models. It's just saying explicitly that instead of having to review models already in the market and determine that they should be removed because of nation state or other security concerns they are reviewing them before they go to market. Would be nice if people actually read it instead of hyperventilating.
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Please avoid low-substance, self-promotional comments like this on HN. It's OK to mention your own product/service occasionally, but only if it's in context and as a part of a comment that makes a substantive, insightful contribution to the discussion.<p>Also, we recommend using a username that seems human, rather than being based on a company/brand name, otherwise it seems like you are here primarily for promotional purposes rather than curious conversation. You can email us to change the username if you'd like – hn@ycombinator.com.
Thanks Tom. This whole comment thread is a bit of a dumpster fire of opinions however we have been working on the wifi security problem for a long time and we have a lot to say about it. Router manufacturers competing into involution that ship RCE (much of which is triggerable from a web page) have created a substantial risk to consumers, in this case with a lens on the US market. We tackle hardware & software and prioritized network isolation as the first thing to resolve. We have tons on our blog and page about network security and have open source software.
> however we have been working on the wifi security problem for a long time and we have a lot to say about it<p>Great, please share it with us! If what you've said is true, the kind of comment you're uniquely qualified to share is the very thing the thread most needs.
What the fuck?! I did not sign up to live in some third world shithole where I can't get first-world networking equipment. I do not want some piece of shit closed-source proprietary netgear ameritrash. FUCK! Give me back my god damn chinese routers!<p>Chinese citizens have more computing freedom than American citizens at this point. What the fuck happened to the land of the free?
I doubt anything will be pulled from the market. This is instead notice to the companies that now is the time for a donation to the administration’s ballroom.
Right now, the way this is currently worded, every single foreign-made consumer router has already been pulled from the market, and has to request permission to be reintroduced. The only consumer routers not currently affected are those that are either already purchased (some good, but won't last forever) or are American-made (overpriced, underpowered dogshit)
From the news release "What does this mean?" section: "This update to the Covered List does not prohibit the import, sale, or use of any existing device models the FCC previously authorized."<p>So no, this does not pull all existing routers off the market. Anything that already got FCC approval remains approved and new stock may be imported and sold.
Lmao you're an IT guy, right? Get yourself a Raspberry Pi 5, PCIe adapter and a second hand gigabit Intel NIC. Slap a case on that, put OpenWRT on it and bam! High performance, high quality router built from trustworthy parts running open source operating system. Not the prettiest and simplest solution but at least that way you don't have to depend on Realtek chips and Chinese firmware.
I understand the anger but I wouldn't go as far as that last part... the GFW is the ultimate censorship tool. For the record I run tp-link aps
> I do not want some piece of shit closed-source proprietary netgear ameritrash.<p>So much different than the piece of shit closed-source proprietary netgear chinesium.<p>Consumer routers are shit full stop.
The computing freedom = a plausibly deniable backdoor.<p><a href="https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-1389" rel="nofollow">https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-1389</a>
Another favorite, <a href="https://www.synacktiv.com/publications/cool-vulns-dont-live-long-netgear-and-pwn2own" rel="nofollow">https://www.synacktiv.com/publications/cool-vulns-dont-live-...</a><p>the router sniffed plaintext http to grab HTTP User agents to put them into a curl bash command line string. Nice RCE from the browser.
Why wasn't anyone notified about this being in the works? What bulletins did I fail to notice.
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE
Long overdue.