Author Topic: US FTC To Sue Router Manufacturer Over Poor Softwares Practices (Read 2230 times)

GhostShip · « **on:** January 10, 2017, 06:55:17 am »

I think this might toss the cat among the pigeons

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/unsecure-routers-webcams-prompt-feds-to-sue-d-link/

Quote

The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday sued Taiwan-based D-link in federal court. The FTC alleges that D-link routers and webcams left "thousands of consumers at risk" to hacking attacks.

"Defendants have failed to take reasonable steps to protect their routers and IP cameras from widely known and reasonably foreseeable risks of unauthorized access, including by failing to protect against flaws which the Open Web Application Security Project has ranked among the most critical and widespread web application vulnerabilities since at least 2007," the FTC said in a complaint (PDF) filed in San Francisco federal court.

The commission's move comes 11 months after the agency settled with Asus over its insecure routers that allowed attackers to remotely log in to them and, depending on user configurations, change security settings or access files stored on connected devices.

This cant hurt the situation and will hopefully spur more pro-active security implementation policies in an area where it seems they are still woefully lacking.

Pri · « **Reply #1 on:** January 14, 2017, 08:31:54 pm »

I highly recommend pfSense for home users that want some control and up to date security. Their software package has been continually updated for I believe 10 years or more and it still runs on the same hardware you could run it on in 2006. These janky systems that D-Link sell often stop getting software updates very soon after release (inside of 24 months or so).

This leaves users vulnerable and as has been shown by the FTC they ship from the very beginning with open flaws that put people at risk. Don't use this junk, turn an old PC you have (or laptop) into a router instead or buy a ready-made pfSense appliance.