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Re: [LUG] OT: Virginmedia Superhub - Modem Only

 

On 05/01/14 16:41, Julian Hall wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> Just thought this may be of interest as some list members may be on
> Virgin.  A friend of mine recently told me that Virgin download the
> config of your Superhub from your network, which not only contains your
> WiFi password etc but also the MAC addresses of any equipment you have
> configured.  

Whilst this wouldn't surprise me in the least, do you have any better
references than "my mate told me"? It's probably worth pointing out that
most major ISPs have effectively 'root' access to the hubs they supply
customers with, which are technically actually still their property in
most cases: you're just renting them. This is how Virgin, BT, Sky, etc
can forcibly push firmware updates to them on demand.

I've mentioned this before several times, but you really need to keep
your ISP-supplied hubs outside of your trusted network by putting
something you trust in between them and your personal machines, and I
wouldn't recommend hardware firewalls or off-the-shelf security
appliances as they are no more trustworthy. The Snowden revelations
should have adequately proved by now that Cisco, Huawei, Juniper and
basically everyone else is well and truly backdoored. Needless to say I
have an OpenBSD box sitting between my Virgin Superhub and everything on
the inside and I like it that way - only untrusted guests (random
visitors with smartphones, etc) connect directly to the wifi network
supplied by the Superhub and are completely isolated from my various
internal wired and wireless subnets.

Whilst we're talking about the laughable state of consumer-grade router
crapware, this is quite sobering and those of you with older devices
might want to check yours out:

https://github.com/elvanderb/TCP-32764

I have already tested against my Superhub and luckily it's at least not
vulnerable to this.

Regards

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