[LINK] Router security

[David Lochrin]

On Friday 23 June 2017 at 22:10 Nicholas English wrote:

> Separately its interesting how many pages out there reference the dd-wrt / tomato options as being ‘safe’ and 'no need to worry’, no information or rationale, they’re just ‘safe’. I’d be interested in any learnings link may have to share.

Yes, I imagine that derives from the fact it's OSS.

For the sake of those not familiar with this stuff, there are a number of open-source packages out there which can be flashed into an off-the-shelf device from some manufacturer.  Examples include DD-WRT and "tomato" - see for example Wikipedia or https://vpnpick.com/dd-wrt-vs-tomato-vs-open-wrt/  While it would be an interesting project, but I'd suggest experimenting on an old device which could be binned if bricked (:-).

I don't understand enough of the fine detail, but I suspect the main problem would lie in integrating device drivers (especially VDSL2 for the NBN) to suit the hardware.  However most off-the-shelf products use embedded Linux (BusyBox) running on a chipset from Broadcom or other manufacturer who should also provide the device drivers, possibly along with a basic reference implementation.

As a matter of interest, I understand NBN Co. will shut down the connection to any device which doesn't implement the ~whole~ NBN specification if it's not on their list of registered devices.  But I understand they're not actually releasing the list...  Gotcha!

David L.