Most non-programmers don't give a shit about their router beyond "the wifi must work". Something completely stateless that can't be broken or messed with actually sounds like something they'd want.
Well, considering that most home users never update their router's firmware, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the majority of applied updates are malicious.
If you did want to go this route, a simple fix would be to have the write enable line gated by a hardware one-shot timer (think like a 555 timer) triggered by a physical button on the front (and the button would also reboot the router).
The firmware update sequence would go like: Router prompts user to update using button -> user presses update button -> router reboots to clear malicious software -> when the router comes back up, the write enable gate remains open for $n minutes (and maybe there's a GPIO that can hold the gate open if it is already open) -> router performs software update.
The problem is that there's pretty much no way to do this without adding a $1-2 to the BOM, and no manufacturer of (pro|con)sumer routers will do that.
Edit: Or do what stacktrust wrote and just have a toggle switch (update/secure).
> Well, considering that most home users never update their router's firmware, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the majority of applied updates are malicious.
Consumer grade routers often have automatic updates these days.
Yeah I have a pretty nice router and inexplicably, random nights, it drops out at 3am for ~3 minutes and then comes back on (and has all the markings of a reboot in terms of the pattern of request failures). I have to assume Synology just decided that nothing's using the internet at 3am
I had no idea that Synology did routers too, but I would assume this would be a configurable time somewhere in the settings. But yes, that sounds like automatic updates to me.
So here's another problem. Going back to the point made earlier in this thread "users don't care much about their routers." The average user opens their router page exceedingly rarely, which is the benefit of automatic updates. I set up my mom's router, and she works in IT (more in project management these days, so she's fallen into being a mostly non-technical user.) And she still texts me every time she needs to get into it to ask me what the password I set up was... once every few years. The downfall of automatic updates is obviously something like the case of the article this discussion is about. But weigh up the costs and benefits, in my opinion, the scale tips more towards automatic updates when you factor in all the critical level vulnerabilities that router OS's have accrued over the years.
Wormable vulnerability in a router is 10x bigger issue in practice than attacks that brick a router. By "in practice" I mean judging by the real world attacks that I know of. Hacked routers are used as residential proxies for criminals, for DDoS attacks, fast flux networks, credential stuffing attacks, and more. Bricking routers is rare (and very loud), that's why it's news on HN.
Many router malware families don't even try to be persistent. Even Mirai - arguably the most famous router botnet - is not persistent [1]. In case the device is rebooted, it just gets infected again in a few minutes.
It's very important that all network connected devices have an update mechanism, working automatically in the background.
[1] At least the original version. After the code leak people were doing all kinds of updates, so there are some variants that try to be persistent in some cases.
I think that’s usually the case: that will be stored in a small 24c or 93c (i2c or SPI) chip that is separate from the firmware that may only handle 1000 flashes and takes a lot longer to flash (often requiring risky and long downtime).
Half of my technical friends haven't changed theirs from the factory defaults. None of my non-technical friends have changed them. A non-representative sample of SSIDs I receive in my apartment gives 9 default ones, and 2 custom ones (plus mine).
plenty of routers in my country (id go on a limb and say the majority) have both written on a sticker, different password for each device generated when the firmware first gets installed, and people NEVER change it.
edit they also come with a QR code you can scan on your phone to connect to the wifi without manually copy the password, so people just put up that qr code somewhere and connecting is easy enough.
I have a friend who used to do classified military work - and a lot of the firmware on munitions is designed in precisely this way to avoid countermeasures. Advanced systems have a lot of software, and the systems they are shipped on have fuses and circuit traces that are melted to avoid any possible countermeasures or modification once they've passed acceptance.
When the military finds a flaw in their immutable firmware, what do they do with those munitions? Throw them away and build new ones? Routers are networked and critical vulnerabilities that should be addressed get patched on them over time. Is the proposal to just tell the user to buy a new router?
Here is the same with the routers that got bricked. They probably need to be reflashed. Most likely they are leased by the ISP so under their scope of responsibility and maintenance.
"internet doesn't work" -> "send me a new router, it broke", problem solved.
Same type of person who blocks Windows updates, messes with their registry, removes system files and processes, and then complains when Windows gets flaky on them and breaks in strange and unpredictable ways.
> Unified Write Filter (UWF) is an optional Windows 10 feature that helps to protect your drives by intercepting and redirecting any writes to the drive (app installations, settings changes, saved data) to a virtual overlay. The virtual overlay is a temporary location that is cleared during a reboot or when a guest user logs off.. Increases security and reliability where new apps aren't frequently added. Can be used to reduce wear on solid-state drives and other write-sensitive media. Optimizing Application load timing on boot – it can be faster to resume from a HORM file on every boot rather than reloading the system on each boot. UWF replaces the Windows 7 Enhanced Write Filter (EWF) and the File Based Write Filter (FBWF).
Reminds me of some management software we ran on school computers some 20 odd years ago, it basically made the computer immutable and it'd be back to how it was after a reboot. I forgot what it was called and never knew how it worked though, at the time I was impressed. It needed an admin password to make changes that persisted.
They wouldn't have to do that if Windows didn't insist on being forceful with updates even for power users, who can be trusted to decide when to update. Lately it's not as bad since you can delay/disable forced reboots for updates for ~2 months at a time, but still it'd be far more ideal to just be able to turn off forced reboots entirely.
The issue isn't updates breaking stuff, the issue is forced reboots when I have something open for which I don't just want the OS throwing away the state for.
The IT dept. comment is pretty accurate though, just as dismissive, pointlessly snarky and disconnected from doing productive work as the real deal.
