Comment on The US government just banned consumer routers made outside the US

NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

• kibiz0r@midwest.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  The vulnerability is coming from inside the house

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• Cris_Citrus@piefed.zip ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I hope things like hardware made by/for openwrt remain available

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  • Successful_Try543@feddit.org ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    It seems like professional equipment will not be affected:

    While the FCC’s Covered List makes it sound like the US is banning all “routers produced in a foreign country,” it’s defined a bit more narrowly than that. It’s specifically banning “consumer-grade routers” as defined in NIST Internal Report 8425A, which refers to ones “intended for residential use and can be installed by the customer.”

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    • floofloof@lemmy.ca ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      That’s not reassuring. It sounds like they don’t want home users to be able to get any router they could manage themselves.

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      • StealthLizardDrop@piefed.social ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        nail on in the head

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    • Cris_Citrus@piefed.zip ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I’m not sure their like bananapi based router would be considered professional. More home tinkerer

      I’m not sure what that’ll mean for the impact of this change, but I guess we’ll see 🤷🏻‍♂️

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• B0rax@feddit.org ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  What? Because companies from other countries are evil? What makes you think that companies in your own country are better?

  Why does the country even matter?

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  • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    It’s just another routine fascist strategy:

    “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

    “When goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will”

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  • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I’m not from the US. And I think the way they’re trying to tackle it is stupid, roughly for the reasons you say. But on a surface level it’s good that there is some action taken on this matter.

    The country does matter. It allows oversight and regulation to a greater extent. And if it turns out that there’s a backdoor in a router, if it’s made locally there will be someone to criminally charge, whereas if it’s made in China or wherever, that would be impossible.

    Then again, it’s the US, so they’d probably charge some random worker instead of the CEO who demanded the back door be implemented.

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    • B0rax@feddit.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      What kind of oversight are you talking about? Locally produced items do not need to fulfill more regulations.

      If this was about cyber security there would be a mandatory certification (like there is for emc, like the FCC). But blanket statements like „foreign company bad!“ don’t do anything for increasing cyber security

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      • kibiz0r@midwest.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Yeah, items are licensed according to where they’re sold, not made. “More oversight” makes no sense.

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• Successful_Try543@feddit.org ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  but consumer routers are a really significant security junction which historically has always been somewhat neglected.

  You’re right, but simply shifting the produchtion from overseas to US doesn’t inherently make the routers more secure. The aeticle mentions the lack of software updates for discontinued products as a big threat that has been exploited in the past.

  I only read a few sentences before the paywall stopped me,

  Fortunately, there is no paywall for me. Here is the article on archive.org.

  but sounds like they’ll whitelist any foreign manufacturers that are legitimate.

  No, the article mentions only one exception:

  Now, router makers need to A) secure a “conditional approval” that lets them keep getting new products cleared for US entry while they work to convince the government that they’ll open up manufacturing in the US, or B) make the decision to skip selling future products in the US, like dronemaker DJI already did.

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