- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
TP-link is reportedly being investigated over national security concerns linked to vulnerabilities in its very popular routers.
TP-link is reportedly being investigated over national security concerns linked to vulnerabilities in its very popular routers.
We have this really great approach to security where we allow the adversary to infiltrate a huge portion of our infrastructure for years and at many different levels, and then we say “hm, maybe we shouldn’t be allowing this?”
Almost like it has less to do with security and more to do with securitization of economic competition.
If you really think this is just about economic competition, you’re very wrong.
The FBI didn’t recommend using encrypted messaging apps because our infrastructure being compromised is no biggie.
These are computers manufactured by and in a foreign country that’s expressed mutual hostility to the US. Computers follow instructions and manufacturers are in the best positioning to add custom instructions like “if you receive this instruction, brick yourself.”
After the cyber attacks in the last decade people should realize crypto scammers aren’t the only one’s that have an interest in shutting down important infrastructure.
This comment of yours immediately evokes the idea of the right hand that doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.
The right hand is the security theatre that the west is showing its citizens against foreign adversaries who hack their devices and introduce vulnerabilities.
Meanwhile the left hand has been doing mass layoffs and moving manufacturing off-shore ever since the 60s and 70s and trying to fuck over it’s own labour forces to make exponential profits.
Whats funny here is that you guys are bitching about “foreign adversaries” while also handing over the blueprints of your entire infrastructure to said adversaries without giving them anything valuable in return for their cheap labour cost and weak laws.
What did you expect to happen?
The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing; that’s just it you’re right.
There’s no conspiracy where the left and right hand have carefully coordinated this system or conspiracy to protect companies from their legitimate competition. We’re not saying this about Taiwan or European devices (even though many of them are better than the Chinese and American devices) and that’s kind of “case and point” that it’s about more than the economy.
Basically the politicians just screwed up and didn’t think through their decisions and effects of trusting a foreign power to do all this manufacturing for important pieces of infrastructure that “think” … and now there’s a problem.
Yes, this is what a capitalist, non-centrally-planned economy does. There are multiple hands and the hand of the capitalist class is often the strongest and it will do all the things you mentioned, while the gov’t hand is trying to do damage control, but only able to the point where it hurts capitalists.
Does it matter now? The alternatives are either Chinese companies, made in China, or filled with Chinese parts.
I’ll give China credit, they’ve stitched everyone else right up, and we slurped it down because we’re a sucker for cheap shit.
You can buy plenty of American made routers and other hardware that isn’t quite as shady. But like you said, we love our cheap shit here, and don’t give its malicious intent a second thought.
And no, it does not matter now, that’s sort of my point. Pandora’s box has been opened.
Well its just natural for coubtries to do this at this point when they dont like each other
In an off topic, I often prefer a open hardware router like raspberry pi router as it gives me control! For me it’s safer to use as documentation is open like pfsense and openwrt.
I don’t understand why doesn’t Raspberry Pi make a router when they’ve ideas like the 500 🤦🏻♂️
There’s already OpenWrt for Pi. All you need is to add a switch or a USB ethernet adapter.
I mean as a direct product that average people can directly buy instead of TP-Link.
OpenWRT did
If anyone at the user level is concerned about backdoors, the OpenWrt One comes straight from AliExpress. 😂 With that said there’s probably magnitudes less risk of something nefarious going on with a low volume machine built by Banana Pi than TP-Link.
Along with Turris Omnia
And now am asking Raspberry Pi itself like GL.iNet have~