Try3 said:

The core of the Which article concerns the widespread use of unsupported routers, routers which are no longer receiving [firmware] security updates.

- Whilst the Which investigation was focussed on routers supplied by ISPs, it seems to me that there is no particular reason to suppose that owners of privately-bought routers are any more likely to replace them when support ends or that owners are even likely to be aware that support has ended.

- Which also mention that many people are still using the poor default passwords that their routers were supplied with.
- Which also identified a serious security vulnerability in the EE Brightbox 2 router

Perhaps the most important observation is that not all router makers [and ISPs who supply routers] have effective working relationships with security investigators [unlike OS publishers].

- So, it seems to me, there is no justification for assuming that the absence of a security update indicates that no vulnerabilities exist.

Denis

Hi there
@Try3

I wonder how many people even know that routers can receive security updates at all. I think also the chances of typical people being competant enough to apply Firmware updates might cause more problems than it solves -- Bricked routers etc etc.

It's in the ISP's interests I'd think to simply just send the customer a new router as and when required if they can't do the upgrade remotely themselves automatically--this must be surely far cheaper than having zillions of service personnel dealing with problems -- however I'm afraid recently for large corporations - there's a two word description of their dedication to their paying customers that have probably been removed from the English Dictionary (or equivalent in a lot of other languages too). " Customer Service".

Offshored technicians being paid a few cents per hour might make the CEO's seem good for a few weeks for reducing "Costs" and make the balance sheet look good --then they collect their bonuses and move on - meanwhile the following year profits dip and the whole sorry exercise of "Cost Cutting" starts again while customers are left stranded "on the beach".

I'm in no way a "Red revolutionary" but I do think something seems to smell not very nice in the way a load of big corporations conduct their business and how they treat their customers these days.

I have a SKY Q box from the UK ("Don't ask me how please !!) and they can upgrade automatically via remote without problems -- just had an upgrade to get WDR ultra HD reception for SKY TV -- I don't obviously have SKY Internet here !! - so remote firmware upgrade is definitely possible.

Cheers
jimbo

Mine is 3 years old Fritz!Box, not a new model but happy with it - nice interface and its automatic updates are not worse than WU ... Hope that will be safe to use for some time.