this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2024
98 points (99.0% liked)

News

23612 readers
5094 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Summary

In October, Microsoft published an analysis which found that a Chinese hacking entity had access to a trove of compromised TP-Link routers.

The Justice Department is also investigating whether TP-Link’s low pricing violates U.S. antitrust laws.

TP-Link denies selling below cost and claims its security practices meet U.S. standards.

The potential ban highlights growing scrutiny of Chinese tech products used widely in homes, businesses, and even U.S. federal agencies.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Does flashing a custom firmware like OpenWRT nullify the compromised firmware?

[–] sandwichsaregood 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Not fully, there are still places a backdoor could be hidden (and that's disregarding the possibility of backdoors in OpenWRT, which just recently fended off its own supply chain attack), but I'd sure trust it more.

The thing to keep in mind is that the more sophisticated and difficult to detect a backdoor is, the more valuable it is. And therefore, the less likely it is to ever be used against a normal person. So getting rid of blatantly buggy and insecure software, which TP-Link unfortunately has a bit of a reputation for, goes a long way. And not to pick on TP-Link, evidence suggests many/most home routers are riddled with vulnerabilities.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

And to complement your answer, the place where a custom firmware might still be compromised is mostly in the binary blobs, where proprietary code for the radios and some other chips aren't open-source and act like some kind of black box between the software and the hardware and make it work.

Unless someone reverse-engineer those blobs and make an open-source alternative.

[–] sandwichsaregood 2 points 6 hours ago

Hardware backdoors are also possible in the silicon, and are probably some of the most dangerous. Fortunately also probably some of the most sophisticated and difficult to introduce.