[olug] Linksys router Vulnerability

[Rob Townley]

On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 9:55 AM, Rob Townley <rob.townley at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 2:41 AM, DYNATRON tech <dynatron at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > thank you chris.
> >
> > i knew a little bit about the situation, but i had not gotten that
> > in-depth.
> > i see what you mean now luke. that is a bit of a downer.
> > however, i still have to say that it is a good router.
> >
> > linksys (cisco) must have sold millions of these things.
> > i have to give them credit for bringing wireless to the masses at an
> > affordable cost.
> > if cutting the memory in half is what made it affordable, i'd say it's
> > for
> > the greater good.
> > if they cut the memory, and not the price, then yeah.....the WRT sucks!
> >
> >
> > On 3/11/08, Christopher Cashell <topher-olug at zyp.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 1:14 AM, DYNATRON tech <dynatron at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > > > what problems have you had with them, luke?
> > >
> > > I think Luke is refering to the fact that starting with the v5 WRT54G
> > > Linksys moved from a Linux based firmware to a minimal embedded
> > > VxWorks OS.  At the same time, they cut the RAM and flash in half
> > > (16MB of RAM to 8GMB of RAM, 4MB of flash to 2MB of flash).  This made
> > > the custom firmware projects like OpenWRT and such unusable (at least
> > > initially, a couple of them managed to release stripped down, less
> > > functional, variants for the v5 on).
> > >
> > > On the plus side, Linksys released the WRT54GL shortly after the v5
> > > WRT54G was released.  The L variant is basically just a renamed v4
> > > WRT54G sold to keep those wishing to run custom firmware happy (the
> > > 'L' allegedly stands for Linux).  It's a small thing, but I was quite
> > > impressed when Linksys did this, as I expect that the number of people
> > > who really loaded custom firmware (of which I am one) is an extremely
> > > small part of their WRT54G customer base.
> > >
> > > --
> > > Christopher
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > dynatron digital services
> > box 191 - 68037
> > www.dynatron.org
> > dynatron at gmail.com
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
>
> i know what you mean Dynatron as i was a big fan of Linksys at one time.
> Then i started to critically think about Cisco buying Linksys in 2003 as
> buying companies and lawsuits are ways of controlling the market.  Cisco
> would have us believe that cutting memory was to save money.  But memory is
> cheap especially when you are talking about less than 16MB on a worldwide
> distribution scale.  It has much more to do with the fact that open source
> versions of the Linksys routers competed directly with Cisco's expensive
> (several hundred dollars and more) wireless systems.   FON may not be the
> best hardware but it is much much cheaper than any version of Linksys (would
> really like to know exactly how much flash and ram comes inside a FON off
> the top of my head).  Cisco bought Linksys to control the market - not to
> help the consumer.   One of the best competitors to  Cisco Linksys when it
> comes to FOSS seems to have been BuffaloTech.  But  http://www.buffalotech.com/products/wireless/
> <http://www.buffalotech.com/products/wireless/>  still can't be sold in
> the USA.  It is EXTREMELY interesting to me as it should be you that Cisco
> Linksys is not on the list of companies that filed an amicus brief in
> support of BuffaloTech.  Anyone truly interested in lower prices for the
> consumer wireless has to ask why Cisco Linksys doesn't support BuffaloTech
> in this lawsuit because potentially every wireless manufacturer may be
> barred from selling in the US with the exception of Cisco of course.  Cisco
> Linksys indirectly supporting the CSIRO lawsuit is almost the same tactic of
> Microsoft supporting the SCO lawsuit.  If Cisco Linksys released an
> 802.11N router with an open source download, then i might change my mind,
> but i suspect they won't do that if they ever do till the others have been
> buried.
>
>


Well for a little more to munch on from csiro.au
   website:  "That design, licensed to Australian company Radiata
(subsequently acquired by Cisco for US$300 million in
2000<http://www.solve.csiro.au/0807/article14.htm>),
led to the first demonstration of a chip implementing the standard IEEE
802.11a."  Governments and Companies working together can be a great thing
and it often is, it can also be fascism.