The underlying problem with the TP-Link routers, he said, is unencrypted communication, and it is an issue where the public is underinformed.
“All unencrypted communications on these routers could be compromised, which is worrisome because intra-network communication is often unencrypted for performance’s sake. You’ll get faster internet speeds, but you could be risking your personal data,” Radolec said.
Even if banking information, for instance, is encrypted, that wouldn’t protect all the unprotected personal data that passes through an unprotected, vulnerable home router.
what the hell is he even talking about? No home router uses encrypted communication on the local network, but he doesn’t even specify what “communication” he’s talking about. Because it’s just blatant lies to create FUD.
Also, no home router manufacturer makes good, “secure” home routers. Even ones made by Apple and Google are probably junk.
People in industry who propagate these types of lies, who give credence to them shouldn’t be able to show their faces in public. Like they should get bullied and cajoled out of any convention they try and step foot in. Just absurd because devices like these can be easily monitored. You can mirror their WAN traffic and just sit there and look for evil Chinese spying and not find it because it isn’t there. I hate IT/infosec fascists. I miss the halcyon days when there was at least a more prominent anarchist hacker vibe and talk like this was held up to scorn because it was seen as coming from the same place as the demand for clipper chips.
What TPlink should do is opensource their firmware. It’s a good thing to do. Though it wouldn’t save them it might buy a little time, Kaspersky opened transparency centers where governments could send someone into a secured room to see their source code and ask questions and they still got banned because muh Russia bad.
The people who created this rumor, in other words, employed it as a way of convincing prospective buyers to purchase their detergent instead of Tide because Tide worships the Devil. That seems hamfisted and over-the-top doesn’t it? A vaguer, less extreme rumor might have seemed likelier to work better — something subtler than the ultimate trump card of claiming that P&G was literally in league with Satan.
But the rumor was effective. Spectacularly effective. It went viral years before most of us had ever thought to use that term that way. And it lives on, still surfacing and resurfacing after decades spent trying to kill it through truth-telling dossiers and aggressive litigation.
I wonder if taking away half of the country’s treats arbitrarily will backfire horribly
Joked about it before but this should be the narrative the left pushes: “Conservatives just want to take away your treats.”
We’re not treatlers, we’re treatskys.
the most damning things said about tp link routers are things that are equally true about routers from any company. yes, there are vulnerabilities, yes they sometimes get hacked and become involved in larger attacks. none of that is unique to any one brand
tplink actually has less vulnerabilities than avg. if they get banned i will continue to buy them especially as their prices drop. i will one day be able to afford 2.5gbe on my home network
we already had first router ban, but what about second router ban?
I have one. It is mid. Could probably be good if it has a dd-wrt port by now, but it didn’t the last time I checked.
did you check for OpenWRT support?
Yeah, I think so. Been a while.
