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DOJ quietly removed Russian malware from routers in US homes and businesses (arstechnica.com)

submitted 9 months ago by issue0315@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] Nougat@kbin.social 64 points 9 months ago (15 children)

Why is the default setting to enable remote administration?

[–] 520@kbin.social 45 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Because these routers went out to everybody. Tech heads and idiots alike. It is far easier for ISPs to simply remote in than rely on the consumer who may be an idiot.

[–] rdyoung@lemmy.world 31 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This is why I run my own router. I'm sure my cable modem has a way in but then you'd have to get past my router.

[–] 520@kbin.social 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Ditto. I went one step further and put OpenWRT on mine.

Messed up thing is, some ISPs make it an absolute bitch to make this work.

[–] aStonedSanta@lemm.ee 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Yup. I used to think it was malicious by the ISPs but really it’s just all the end technology is kinda A mess for them to have control of the network for you. Which I’m gonna be honest 99.9% of customers NEED. lol

[–] histic@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

agreed my local area isp switched to calix for most of our customers and it's really nice just to have a management interface to all of our customers and be able to fix it without having to roll a truck

[–] aStonedSanta@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago

Yup. It’s never perfect but from a customer to tech support perspective it’s a lot easier for almost all end users. And anyone else can usually figure their own shit out anyways so that’s heavily offered also.

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I can’t think of a single ISP that was using old Ubiquiti EdgeOS routers as consumer routers.

[–] 520@kbin.social 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

So if we're not talking about ISPs sending this out, then the reason that remote access gets turned on by default is incase the company sysadmin couldn't physically get to the device, and they assumed the company had a firewall.

Companies almost always prioritise OOTB setup and operationality over security when it comes to defaults.

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

They likely weren’t enabled by default at all. Because that’s generally not how company IT departments even remote manage these things. And the affected devices are the firewalls.

Remote administration was turned on manually, by the owners of these devices, because they didn’t know what they were doing.

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