[HN Gopher] List of 8000 security vulnerabilities in 1200 Wi-Fi ...
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       List of 8000 security vulnerabilities in 1200 Wi-Fi routers
        
       Author : ndata
       Score  : 146 points
       Date   : 2021-11-16 18:30 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (modemly.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (modemly.com)
        
       | gennarro wrote:
       | This is pretty cool. What dataset is this based on?
        
         | Jon_Lowtek wrote:
         | The vulnerability list seems to be CVE data filtered for
         | routers, grouped by vendors.
        
       | politelemon wrote:
       | I couldn't find the ever popular Asus RT Ac86u in that list, or
       | the X version. Would it be converted under "asuswrt"?
        
         | msbarnett wrote:
         | Yeah, that's an asuswrt-based router
        
         | 0134340 wrote:
         | Yes. And Asuswrt is based upon, iirc, the open-source Tomato.
        
       | Kikawala wrote:
       | Reminds me of routerpwn.com
        
       | hk1337 wrote:
       | Interesting, I don't see arris (ATT gateway) on the list. Not
       | sure if that's because there's no vulnerabilities or not as well
       | known?
        
       | Namidairo wrote:
       | I already have little hope for consumer networking equipment,
       | this just seems like a big old list of scraped CVE's.
       | 
       | One has to remember that the majority of the development ends up
       | being by the SoC vendor, usually a horribly out of date fork of
       | OpenWrt with weird looking proprietary kernel modules to support
       | wifi, accelerated nat, etc.
       | 
       | Quite a few of the older devices lack some pretty basic
       | mitigations as well; ASLR, Position Independent Executables,
       | Stack Canaries, etc. Either they get forgotten or they're off
       | because of they can't be bothered getting the drivers up to
       | scratch. (Assuming they haven't just been handed a binary)
        
       | willis936 wrote:
       | Holy smokes. The router I used for many years has 79 listed
       | vulnerabilities.
       | 
       | I got a used Ruckus earlier this year and it's been great.
        
       | ghostly_s wrote:
       | Every exploit listed for my router (tplink Archer A7) has no
       | "affected version" listed nor indications if it has been patched,
       | but clicking through to the CVEs indicates all have been
       | remediated. As near as I can tell this website is just scraping
       | CVEs, poorly, in order to sell their security services (which
       | consist, at least in part, of an email reminder to rotate your
       | router password...seriously?).
        
         | wnevets wrote:
         | so spam?
        
         | ndata wrote:
         | OP here, Yes, I agree, we (modemly) could do better
         | 
         | 1. Show the vulnerability status (patched / open) 2. Show
         | affected firmware versions 3. Display manufacturer's last patch
         | release date
         | 
         | Though lots of the dataset is clean, still we do lots of
         | parsing and regexing to extract insights out of a massive
         | haystack. The intention of this tool is for everyone to realize
         | and keep their firmware updated
         | 
         | And No, we don't sell any services. The security reminder
         | emails are free
        
         | bserge wrote:
         | You're not using OpenWRT on a C7/A7? Please do someone a favour
         | and sell it, they're in short supply.
        
       | david_draco wrote:
       | When will BrickerBot be reborn? The world needs you!
        
       | xedrac wrote:
       | So 80% of these vulnerabilities are on Netgear routers, and
       | nearly all of them are rated as High severity. That's really
       | impressive. I don't think I'll buy a Netgear router ever again.
        
         | proactivesvcs wrote:
         | Skirting a discussion on how relatively good or bad Netgear
         | are, the results seem to be vague as to whether they're
         | resolved, how bad each vulnerability is, and it seems to list a
         | device for each firmware version. I don't think the front-page
         | numbers are necessarily particularly helpful.
        
         | chasil wrote:
         | If the router allows 3rd-party firmware and well-maintained
         | ROMs are available, why avoid the hardware (unless you don't
         | want to apply the upgrades)?
         | 
         | Cable modems typically do not allow this; only the cable
         | provider is able to apply oem firmware updates.
        
       | lostmsu wrote:
       | I don't see this to be too useful. Many vulnerabilities listed on
       | this web site are for outdated firmware versions.
        
         | jvolkman wrote:
         | How many people actually update their router firmware?
        
           | lostmsu wrote:
           | How many people who would go to that web site do not update
           | their router firmware?
        
             | jvolkman wrote:
             | Fair. But if the site doesn't list vulnerabilities in older
             | firmware, then someone stumbling upon it that hasn't kept
             | their router up to date won't see their actual
             | vulnerabilities listed.
        
               | RealStickman_ wrote:
               | This list is still useless in that case, as it doesn't
               | list the affected firmware versions as far as I can see.
        
       | fairytale wrote:
       | Just wait and see till all those thirsty script kiddies start
       | abusing these even more now.
       | 
       | On a side note, those who write router software like this need to
       | step up their security and stop being lazy. Seriously.
        
       | clb92 wrote:
       | Sure, 1200 routers. Except someone listed single Synology
       | applications as router models for some reason. Synology only has
       | a couple routers, not 32 different models. If the quality of the
       | rest of the data is similar, this list isn't very useful.
        
       | fencepost wrote:
       | Interesting to not see Mikrotik on the list, though I'm not sure
       | how far back you'd need to go to find hardware that's not still
       | receiving firmware updates - certainly well over 10 years.
        
         | paulmd wrote:
         | I also don't see Buffalo. The question is whether they're not
         | vulnerable, or whether they were simply not tested (being
         | smaller brands).
        
         | chasil wrote:
         | I have a Ubee cable modem with integrated wireless, and this
         | manufacturer is not on the list either.
         | 
         | It would also be helpful to see how many vulnerabilities are in
         | the latest release of Gargoyle.
         | 
         | I have heard that the best countermeasure for router vendor
         | abandonware is to avoid the 192.168 network entirely, so I
         | configured mine on a random 10. subnet.
        
       | PaulKeeble wrote:
       | A lot of these routers have DD-WRT, OpenWRT, FreshTomato or maybe
       | pfsense support. Since the manufacturers long ago abandoned
       | security updates and feature upgrades an open source firmware
       | will vastly improve the security and the devices functionality.
       | 
       | Not all routers can run one of these firmwares but many can and I
       | wouldn't choose a device that didn't in the future. Its
       | relatively easy to setup a basic secure home router using a
       | Raspberry pi 4 and USB Ethernet and then attach one to a hub and
       | the other to the modem and you have a 1 gbit/s capable routing
       | device that can do SQM and remove bufferbloat and not a lot of
       | consumer routers can remotely achieve that level of performance.
       | 
       | It is more hassle than the manufacturers firmware, but its also a
       | surprisingly good way to extend a routers usable life and
       | functionality as well. VPNs, Virtual LAN, File and web servers or
       | just better QoS you can do just about anything you might want.
        
         | bserge wrote:
         | I've been seeing "buffer bloat" a lot recently. Why have people
         | started caring about it? It's really not a problem in most
         | cases and SQM adds nothing but extra CPU usage.
         | 
         | It's just the new "QoS". Back in the day, if you didn't use
         | QoS, you were a loser :D
        
         | waltbosz wrote:
         | Does anyone maintain a list like this one for vulnerabilities
         | in open source router firmware ?
        
           | PaulKeeble wrote:
           | Given they are all continuously updating its unlikely such a
           | list would exist. The way this usually works for open source
           | software is that the vulnerability isn't made public until
           | the software patch has already been issued and its very rare
           | to get anything other than "security issue fixed" in the
           | changelogs anyway. The answer should be on the latest version
           | of the firmware no outstanding known vulnerabilities or very
           | few.
           | 
           | The entire problem is that most of these routers haven't
           | received updates in years from the manufacturers, they are
           | abandoned. The open source firmware's are not abandoned and
           | are continuously getting updates for their underlying
           | packages from Linux/NetBSD even if they aren't doing
           | substantial development themselves. What vulnerabilities that
           | do exist and are not getting fixed will be in the hardware
           | binaries for wifi for the FreshTomato supported routers and
           | those usually listed as poor or no wifi support in openWRT,
           | that is about it.
        
             | chasil wrote:
             | The last release of Gargoyle was last year, and Shibby
             | Tomato went silent several years ago, probably taking a lot
             | of older routers out of 3rd-party ROM updates.
             | 
             | Many router ROMS don't come out as often as is necessary to
             | address exploits in a timely manner.
        
         | londons_explore wrote:
         | Most VDSL routers don't have any decent support on DD-WRT or
         | OpenWRT due to the proprietary firmware blobs required for all
         | the DSP algorithms inside the modem.
         | 
         | Sadly, that means a massive chunk of the world connected by
         | ADSL/VDSL can't use this advice.
        
           | PaulKeeble wrote:
           | You can but you need your own device that supports an open
           | source firmware. The ISP provided modem you can potentially
           | put in modem mode at which point its just the interface to
           | the wire and you can then run your own router in PPPoE mode
           | to interface to it and out to the internet. If the ISP
           | provided device can't do that then turn off its NAT, firewall
           | and wifi and just configure it to connect to the internet and
           | plug into anetwork port just your router from the routers WAN
           | port and then use DHCP WAN configuration. Then all your
           | devices only go into your device. The only device exposed by
           | the poor security of the manufacturer is the modem itself and
           | your network is defended by your personal device.
           | 
           | There are a bunch of other ways to do it but you can
           | absolutely have your network defended by your own device
           | running open source firmware and still use the device the ISP
           | has provided mostly as a modem. I use a DHCP WAN on my router
           | which outputs to the ISPs provided router which is just a
           | modem at this point and not a lot else. It still runs DHCP
           | and DNS and all that other junk but my home network doesn't
           | use any of it. I use Virtual LANs internally for some
           | development services I use so the default ISP routers are
           | useless to me and after issues with various routers with VDSL
           | modems I gave up and have used openWRT ever since. I also use
           | separate access points for wifi since its another area
           | openWRT is a little behind just due to how long drivers take
           | to come out.
        
             | londons_explore wrote:
             | And then you have fun with the fact the ISP resets all the
             | devices back to defaults once a week... And if you have to
             | live with it in its default config you have double-NAT and
             | games and web conferencing stuff doesn't work properly.
             | 
             | It's just a bad compromise.
        
         | paulmd wrote:
         | The lack of ongoing support from device manufacturers is really
         | awful. There were some major UPnP vulnerabilities (last year,
         | as well as some previous ones iirc) and a parade of attacks
         | against WPA of various levels and very few devices ever get
         | patched for them - including high-spec devices.
         | 
         | Running open-source firmware is basically necessary to have any
         | chance against all these attacks, because manufacturers simply
         | won't do the work.
         | 
         | There really really needs to be some regulation on this,
         | internet of things devices as well. Give a defined minimum
         | software update lifespan on the box at time of purchase and
         | require that it be at least 3 years from the date of sale, for
         | example.
        
       | SavantIdiot wrote:
       | Interesting.
       | 
       | a) How does someone compile this and keep it current? FTWP:
       | "17,000 routers per month" ... ? That's ... daunting.
       | 
       | b) Was Ubiquiti UniFi (or brand ___) excluded because their
       | routers have no vulnerabilities or because they weren't tested?
        
         | pixl97 wrote:
         | Not sure, but if you go to the main site, they do list
         | instructions for Ubiquiti equipment so they seem to know about
         | them.
        
         | capableweb wrote:
         | A) Shortly: Automation. Long: "Every month, We evaluate 17000
         | routers for security Vulnerabilities using the national
         | vulnerability database and publish the list with the
         | remediation steps" from the website
        
       | mbesto wrote:
       | How has someone not made a commercially available open source
       | hardware router and just load it up with DD-WRT or Tomato?
        
         | funnyflamigo wrote:
         | Linksys does!
         | 
         | They have a series of routers designed to support OpenWRT
         | (which IMO is better then DD-WRT but preferences of course). If
         | it supports OpenWRT then others shouldn't be difficult to load
         | on it either.
         | 
         | https://openwrt.org/toh/linksys/wrt_ac_series
         | 
         | I've had a decent experience with OpenWRT on a WRT1200AC
         | 
         | EDIT: I haven't used it for actual wifi (just
         | routing/switching) in a few years so I don't know how good they
         | are nowadays.
         | 
         | EDIT 2: OP asked for open source hardware, not hardware that
         | runs open source firmware - my bad!
        
           | LeifCarrotson wrote:
           | Linksys does not make Open Source Hardware.
           | 
           | Also, it ships with their proprietary "Smart Wi-Fi", not
           | OpenWRT.
           | 
           | > _While the Linksys WRT1200AC provides an outstanding
           | experience via Smart Wi-Fi immediately out of the box,
           | advanced users can further modify the router with open source
           | firmware. Developed for use with OpenWRT, an open source
           | Linux-based..._ [0]
           | 
           | No one, to my knowledge, makes the appropriate Gigabit
           | Ethernet (ideally Dual Gigabit Ethernet) + Wifi Open-Source
           | Hardware SBC that could be used as a router. There are a lot
           | of SBCs with open-source software and mostly-accurate PDFs of
           | their schematics, but very few (the Olimex OLinuXino project,
           | maybe?) that are actually open hardware.
           | 
           | I do understand that truly open-source hardware is a tough
           | sell, as Jay pointed out in his amazing piece "So you want to
           | build an Embedded Linux system" [1]
           | 
           | > _People forget that these EVKs are built at substantially
           | higher volumes than prototype hardware is; I often have to
           | explain to inexperienced project managers why it's going to
           | cost nearly $4000 [2] to manufacture 5 prototypes of
           | something you can buy for $56 [3] each._
           | 
           | And an EVK is likely built at a lower volume than a consumer
           | SBC. The idea that someone can download your hardware design,
           | modify it, and respin it for their desired open-source router
           | but now with a piezo buzzer added might work for Arduino-
           | scale hardware projects but simply isn't reasonable for
           | something that reaches the performance required of a router.
           | 
           | [0]: https://www.linksys.com/ca/wireless-routers/wrt-
           | wireless-rou...
           | 
           | [1]: https://jaycarlson.net/embedded-linux/#
           | 
           | [2]: https://circuithub.com/projects/jaycarlson/BEAGLEBONE_BL
           | ACK/...
           | 
           | [3]: https://www.newark.com/beagleboard/bbone-
           | black-4g/beaglebone...
        
             | funnyflamigo wrote:
             | I apologize I misread OP's question. I incorrectly
             | interpreted it as "hardware that supports opensource
             | firmware such as DD-WRT/Tomato".
             | 
             | In terms of hardware like you mentioned there's few open
             | source SBC's at all. Even fairly open hardware like the
             | raspberry pi have a proprietary firmware blob. I guess it
             | will come down to how strictly you define "open source". If
             | you define it as "we have firmware/schematics for every
             | chip on the board" then we'll likely never have that (I
             | don't think even Linksys has that type of access).
        
           | silasdavis wrote:
           | Also very happy with openwrt on this device. Really quite a
           | decent gui tui and config. Setting up always on open vpn and
           | wireguard was reasonably painless and works well.
        
           | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
           | I tried OpenWRT a few years ago on my WRT3200acm and the
           | wireless quality was severely lacking. Has a lot changed
           | since then? Do you think it's worth giving another go?
           | 
           | It hasn't been updated since Jan of 2020 but I also don't see
           | any vulns listed for it.
        
             | wtallis wrote:
             | > It hasn't been updated since Jan of 2020 but I also don't
             | see any vulns listed for it.
             | 
             | Are you referring to the manufacturer's firmware or
             | OpenWRT? The latter's last release was three weeks ago.
        
             | Namidairo wrote:
             | IIRC, the WRT3200ACM had other large issues in regards to
             | wifi... (WPA3 was off the cards because the firmware blob
             | just does not support protected management frames, for
             | example.)
        
             | mikeyschaefer wrote:
             | I just tried the wrt3200acm with openwrt for about a month
             | and it wasn't nearly stable enough. The wifi issue is
             | pretty well know and people seem to be working on it but
             | I'd stay away.
        
             | funnyflamigo wrote:
             | I haven't stayed up to date with them to be honest. I've
             | switched to ubiquiti access points with my WRT1200AC as
             | just a switch/router. My plan is to upgrade to a x86 box
             | with openwrt or something similar.
             | 
             | So if you had issues with the WRT3200acm I'd go a different
             | route
        
         | LeifCarrotson wrote:
         | It's older now, but for several years I used a Buffalo N300
         | router which came pre-flashed running DDRWT out of the box:
         | 
         | https://www.buffalotech.com/products/airstation-highpower-n3...
         | 
         | I say "used" because my main router has been updated to an
         | AC1900 solution, but it's still kicking, I'm just running it as
         | an access point. Unfortunately, both it and their updated
         | AC1200 solution:
         | 
         | https://www.buffalotech.com/products/airstation-ac1200-gigab...
         | 
         | are discontinued.
         | 
         | Also, while it's pre-flashed with open-source software, it's
         | not Open Source Hardware.
        
         | paulmd wrote:
         | Buffalo does this as well, and there's a variety of PFSense
         | hardware available.
         | 
         | In PFSense hardware you can even find things with atom
         | processors or laptop tier processors - which are going to be
         | more power-hungry than ARM but also a lot faster, and x86 means
         | everything is bog-standard drivers/etc and Just Works. Although
         | I suppose with the world we live in, perhaps not having your
         | web-facing device have speculative execution would be better.
         | 
         | At that level of cost, many people also go to standalone WAPs
         | (although of course there's no reason you can't use DD-
         | WRT/OpenWrt/Tomato to turn an old router into a WAP as well).
         | 
         | Some hardware I've seen recommended for PFsense before:
         | 
         | Alix PC Engines APU2
         | 
         | Netgate SG-1100
         | 
         | Protectli Vault
        
         | ipodopt wrote:
         | https://www.turris.com/en/
         | 
         | https://docs.turris.cz/
         | 
         | New version coming out next year with 10 gbs ethernet and wifi
         | 6. Made by an established internet company: https://www.nic.cz/
        
           | spaniard89277 wrote:
           | Hey, have been researching about this brand recently. Any
           | experience?
        
           | mnd999 wrote:
           | Satisfied Omnia customer here. It's a decent router with
           | enough performance to host a small website and Logitech media
           | server in lxc containers as well.
        
             | mcspiff wrote:
             | Somewhat satisfied customer here. Omnia is great as a wired
             | router but I offloaded wifi to another device (eero in my
             | case). Mox I was less satisfied with, has some strange bugs
             | that have never been fixed. I probably wouldn't pre-buy a
             | new Turris device, but if the reviews are good I would go
             | for it again.
        
               | spaniard89277 wrote:
               | Why did you use another device for wifi?
        
         | mikeyschaefer wrote:
         | These come pre installed with Openwrt. I haven't tried any of
         | their products though.
         | 
         | https://www.gl-inet.com/products/
        
           | zikduruqe wrote:
           | These are my next to investigate if my current Eero network
           | gets replaced. The ability to put Wireguard on the router and
           | not behind it, is the thing I need.
        
         | msbarnett wrote:
         | Asus' routers essentially run a skinned version of Tomato with
         | some Asus-specific enhancements. The stock firmware is open
         | source and there's a popular enhanced fork of it, asuswrt-
         | merlin, that's a drop in replacement.
        
       | emkoemko wrote:
       | device makers should be forced to support their devices and if
       | they don't they must have something like 6 month period where if
       | they don't push a security check flag to their devices they
       | initiate code to nag the user telling them this devices is not
       | secure anymore because manufacture is not supporting it anymore,
       | in this case they should also be forced to release way to load
       | 3rd party code etc to allow others to fix their crap.
       | 
       | This is a serious issue because many people use old devices
       | without knowing anything is wrong.
        
       | lend000 wrote:
       | Is there a way to filter these by remotely exploitable?
       | 
       | Things that can be compromised locally just seem like the cost of
       | doing business at this point (for non-business use, anyway).
        
         | netizen-936824 wrote:
         | Filtering by "not bullshit" or "patched years ago" would be a
         | better start
        
       | unfocused wrote:
       | I had no idea Huawei produced so many routers.
        
       | aliswe wrote:
       | I am more amazed that there are so many routers than the number
       | of vulnerabilities!
        
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       (page generated 2021-11-16 23:00 UTC)