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D-Link DIR-655 Firmware 1.21 Hijacks Your Internet Connection
chronopunk writes "Normally when you think of firmware updates for a router you would expect security updates and bug fixes. Would you ever expect the company that makes the product to try and sell you a subscription for security software using its firmware as a salesperson? I recently ran into this myself when trying to troubleshoot my router. I noticed when trying to go to Google that my router was hijacking DNS and sent me to a website trying to sell me a software subscription. After upgrading your D-link DIR-655 router to the latest firmware you'll see that D-link does this, and calls the hijacking a 'feature.'"
You have to manually upgrade the firmware and going back to plan old 1.20 is exactly the same process. It's not exactly hard to "disable". I have this router and also recently updated my firmware but I have not encountered this yet...
Well, I for one welcome our new SUBSCRIPTION REQUIRED overlords!
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If you RTFA, you'll see that you CAN disable it.
Still pretty hinky, though.
Probably not. But what are you going to do about it? After enough stink, there will likely be a class action suit. No one that has been wronged will get real resolution (maybe a coupon for a new D-link model router for their trouble!). The amount paid out by D-Link will be less than the profit they get from these things. Business as usual.
The only solution is to burn the place down or kill a few key people, then let them all know why. But no one is going to throw their life away on a bad router purchase.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
If you RTFA it is something you can disable (at least according to the D-Link rep, I don't actually own one of these). It sounds like he's ticked off because it was slipped in with the firmware upgrade, enabled by default, and if you're not technically inclined you'd probably not realize what was causing the hijacking. It is a scummy thing to do, but hardly illegal, and it's being made out to be a lot worse than it actually is. Had it been disabled by default, or perhaps included instructions on the site it directs you to on how to disable it then it wouldn't be an issue.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Legal? yes. Ethical? no. Tolerated by your customers? Hell no.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I helped my father-in-law purchase a wireless router for his home and set it up for him recently. I was rather surprised when I updated the firmware and was then greeted by spam upon opening a web browser. I have to say that I'm really disappointed by d-link on this one. Here's to hoping that the backlash is enough to make them reconsider doing this type of stuff again.
Generally speaking, I'm a fan of their networking equipment (own a dgl-4300 that I'm very happy with myself), but if this is the direction that they are going in, I won't be buying or recommending their stuff anymore. I plan on e-mailing them and telling them I am unhappy with their practices.
I haven't upgraded to 1.21; however, the reason was when 1.21 first dropped it had SecureSpot. Now I found this out by reading the information on 1.21 so I didn't download and install it. They now (and have for some time) offer 1.21 without SecureSpot; perhaps you should download and install that.
Replying to myself to add some info. Firmware v1.20 doesn't have the "Advanced -> Secure Spot" page they mention so it really seems to be be new in v1.21. The 1.20 firmware can still be downloaded from here.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
Plus, upgrading your firmware "just because". Why?
Because router firmware upgrades often mean closing security holes.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
The non securespot version has been there since the firmware was released. Its simply a case of the submitter not reading and comprehending. Either way, it asks you if you want to try it twice, and then leaves you alone.
Well there's your problem... it was released on 9/11. Of course it came with a few unexpected surprises...
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
there's a separate link at their firmware download page for the DIR-655 that says (in plain view, in a sensible spot): Click here for Firmware 1.21 WITHOUT SecureSpot 2.0
Well, I highly doubt that most customers know what "SecureSpot" is. So how are they supposed to know to download the non-annoying firmware update? Of course, you may say that this is the customer's problem: they should read up on all the features that are being installed in the firmware update, and be sure that this is really what they want, etc.
And, yes, in principle everyone should read every line of each and every EULA.
The fact is that any reasonable person would expect a firmware update to only fix bugs and security flaws. It would not be normal to expect entirely new features to be installed, and it is certainly abnormal for the new "feature" to actually include nagware that prompts you to pay for some new service.
The point here is that what they are doing is sleazy. The default configuration should have that redirect turned off. The link for a "without SecureSpot" firmware is nice, but the fact is that 99.9% of users will only notice that after they have already installed, and been annoyed by, the default update.
It's an annoying thing to do with a firmware update. And in that sense, it's a reason to not do business with them.
Back in 2003 Belkin introduced a router that periodically redirected HTTP connections to advertise its own software:
Help! my Belkin router is spamming me
Some commentary:
Ease-of-use or marketing-driven sabotage: Does your hardware's software do only what you expect of it?
Personally I'd be very happy if I got two oranges rather than just one!
When 1person suffers from a delusion,it is called insanity.When many people suffer from a delusion,it is called religion
Here's an old article about Belkin doing a very similar thing:
Belkin, the consumer networking and connectivity firm, has promised customers a firmware upgrade to disable a controversial 'spamming' feature built into its routers.
As first reported on The Reg last week, the feature hijacks random HTTP requests every eight hours and redirects users to a page advertising Belkin's parental control software. There is an opt-out link but that failed to appease Net users who accused Belkin of creating a new mechanism for spam.
"The only solution is to burn the place down or kill a few key people, then let them all know why."
If only revolution was not such an outdated ideal.
DSLIP Web Design and Content Management Australia.
After massive amounts of pain with consumer/prosumer-grade (many of the D-Link) routers in the past two years, I finally dropped real money for a real broadband router earlier this year. So far, I've had months and months of trouble-free service.
Now I start hearing crap like this. Makes me even MORE thankful I bit the bullet.
Also "you can turn it off!" apologists? WHY IT IS ON BY DEFAULT? Moreover, tell that to some luddite who barely understands how to boot his computer.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Even if there's an option to disable this, the fact that it seems to be enabled by default is enough for me. D-Link from this point on will never be on my list of vendors when looking for networking gear.
Apparently they didn't learn from the shitstorm that hit belkin when they did the exact same thing years ago.
Another vendor goes down the tubes...
Only buy home routers that can run opensource firmwares. I'm quite happy with my WRT54GL, although the hardware is a bit antiquated at this point.
Wow. Recent Netgear switches I've bought were doing the whole 70% packet loss thing (of the five white Netgear hubs I've dealt with, three have been completely worthless; haven't tried the blue metal ones lately), and now DLink moves right along with them onto my do-not-buy list. Linksys (won't work reliably with upstream switches) and Belkin (Wi-Fi routers crash constantly when passing wireless traffic) are both so buggy (to the point of being unusable) that they've been on my do-not-buy list for years. I've just about run out of networking hardware manufacturers....
Why can't just ONE SINGLE networking product company make a pledge to stop cutting corners on quality and looking for ways to make a quick buck off their users and just deliver decent hardware!?!?!?!?!?! Don't ANY of these companies' management chains have the SLIGHTEST bit of fiscal common sense?
Sheesh!
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
This cannot be allowed to go unpunished. Google should sue since it was their domain name that was hijacked and a clear attack on their business.
Google should sue because they have lots of high-priced lawyers and can really make DLink regret this.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
If true, that's the end of D-Link. We would never buy from them again.
Why are marketing people allowed to destroy companies? Then they go to a new company and do it again.
Damn, and I thought D-Link was one of the better companies to buy a router from.
Plus, upgrading your firmware "just because". Why?
Because router firmware upgrades often mean closing security holes.
While one might think this at first, there's no evidence that this is the case for this incident. It's just as likely, without a firmware being released with specific notes about "holes" that it "plugged", that the update created more bugs.
In this case, it was "I felt like upgrading the firmware". The downfalls: User obviously didn't know how the feature set changed (because didn't do research before upgrading the firmware, just saw that one number was larger than the other) and there's always the possibility of bricking your router that is already working just peachy.
So, no, I don't accept your reasoning, even though it seems "sensible" at the start.
The only solution is to burn the place down or kill a few key people, then let them all know why. But no one is going to throw their life away on a bad router purchase.
that's the problem with the youth today, no commitment to principles.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
What's annoying with things like this (and others) is that it just gets in the way and obstructs your work.
I choose things based on their lack of snarkiness. I don't want a Windows PC full of crapware. I'd rather just pay the manufacturer a few extra bucks to cover the loss of crapware kickbacks. I used to run an AV, but occassionally, it would bring up a message telling me I wasn't fully protected because I wasn't running their antispam (despite running Thunderbird). When my renewal came up, I chose another company, and I told them that this was one of the reasons.
Linksys isn't so bad if you replace the firmware. Try dd-wrt if you want quick and easy, or OpenWRT if you want to customize. I guarantee you'll like 'em. (Get a WRT-54GL to try it on; they're cheap nowadays.)
There are routers that run open source firmware. An example of a company that uses open source firmware is Canyon. I've had one for a couple of years now. I got the first hardware revision, so I haven't been able to upgrade my firmware to the latest, but my model is still manufactured, albeit in a later hardware revision and the firmware is open source. Works like a charm.
People are not wearing enough hats.
Hell NO. They're absolute garbage! I've seen more fried D-Link routers than every other brand combined. I'd sooner buy any other no-name brand for *more* money. Plus, they've been doing "evil" stuff like that for ages -- not long ago they were hammering a tier-1 NTP server with their firmware (and the poor guy was footing the bill for them on his own). Their garbage is best avoided.
You want a good router? Get a Linksys WRT54GL (that is NOT the G or GS). Then put tomato on it or DD-WRT (they're Linux distros). Then setup opendns and all that in it too. Best router you can get under $500 perhaps (short of a specialized/fancy cisco router that runs IOS and is easy to mis-configure, an expensive specialized routerboard, or power-hungry computer with moving parts...)
Sounds like a prime example of what happens when salespeople get too much of a say in the development process. Wonder if they made them back-burner fixing actual bugs and security holes in favor of adding adware like this?
whether or not we CAN disable it is moot - there's law regarding redirects without permission. I just can't find the damned thing, but I know it's there having read it here on slashdot.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
This is the original poster. I did a firmware upgrade from withing the router setup page not by downloading it from their website.
From the goddamn article:
So, you can turn it off. Not only that, but as of 9/30 there's a separate link at their firmware download page for the DIR-655 that says (in plain view, in a sensible spot): Click here for Firmware 1.21 WITHOUT SecureSpot 2.0
Plus, upgrading your firmware "just because". Why?
Double flame to you buddy.
1) I wouldn't call "WITHOUT SecureSpot 2.0" in plain view. It's not like SecureSpot means anything to me. It has the name Secure so it sounds like something I would want. Now if they named it KickInTheBalls 2.0 or maybe SlapInTheFace 3.2 I would know to avoid it. SecureSpot means nothing to me.
2) Upgrading firmware on a firewall/router why? Are you kidding me? You're going to be-little people who pro-actively secure their main entry point to the outside world. From now on you should lose your Slashdot posting privs.
I agree that the WRT54GL with Tomato firmware has better QOS than stock Linksys firmware. I have 2 VOIP lines at home with this router and the call quality is noticeably better after the firmware push.
~ Ron Fitzgerald
I never said I was boycotting them in perpetuity. That said, these aren't isolated problems. Three out of five Netgear switches died, three out of three Netgear FA101/FA102 cards died within a couple of years, etc. It takes three bad experiences with a company's product to earn do-not-buy status unless one of those bad experiences is really serious (the Belkin USB-serial adapter that was shorted from the factory and nearly killed my computer, for example).
At least in this DLink case, it's just a political do-not-buy, which might go away if/when they clean up their act. Their gear seems to be electrically mostly solid. That's why this bugs me so much. They were the only one that I hadn't had a long string of horrible hardware faults from. :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Consumer-grade shit is consumer-grade shit in every industry. But I think we can have some expectation that when we buy a router, even a cheap shitty one, that it makes a best effort to send the data we ask and not its own marketing message. To use a bad car analogy, I don't expect my car to corner like a race car, to tow a 16-wheel trailer, to be as comfortable as a Benz. But I do expect that it steers where I turn the wheel, and not to the nearest mall.
Lots of consumer-grade shit is ad-supported; we get cheaper shit in exchange for being coerced into buying more cheap shit. Maybe if a company is going to introduce an ad-supported business model to a class of products where it's generally unexpected they should be required to label it prominently.
Thirded. I just completed a project that cost about $8k dollars by rolling a customized OpenWRT/DD-WRT setup that includes 802.1q VLANs (no wonky iptables junk to seperate networks), 802.1x with authentication against ActiveDirectory, public and private SSIDs available from a single access point, the list goes on.
OpenWRT is enterprise wireless firmware for free that runs on home consumer priced hardware, making it enterprise quality hardware. (Although lacking POE)
My company was going to spend about $75k on a comparable solution from Aruba and I was able to squeeze out every single feature they offer from OpenWRT. So instead of $75k, we're spending $4,500 for the same feature set. Not bad.
So, while D-Link's own firmware is goofy, if you just buy their box and wipe it it you'll be saving yourself money in the long run.
The non securespot version has been there since the firmware was released.
"without SecureSpot" certainly doesn't sound like "without spam". It much more sounds like that version is lacking a security feature, don't you think?
Either way, it asks you if you want to try it twice, and then leaves you alone.
So? It shouldn't even "ask" once. Remember that "ask" in this case means intercepting and manipulating traffic. I'm not familiar with applicable US law, but in the UK and Germany, where I know the law a little, this "feature" runs afoul of criminal laws.
Besides, what kind of attitude is that? It's ok to feel up your wife if I stop after being told twice not to?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
If you RTFA, you'll see that you CAN disable it.
What are we becoming? Now every sleazy behaviour is ok as long as you can opt-out? That hasn't worked for spam for the past 20 years, has everyone suddenly got a learning disorder?
The default behaviour of absolutely everything that's not a requested feature has to be opt-in.
Opt-out is not good enough. I thought we'd learnt that by now.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I do not agree with that. DNS hijacking should be considered illegal criminal activity, regardless of what the reason was. We have enough problems with DNS attacks, the last thing we need is for a company like D-Link to try and legitimize it.
If I buy a router, I wanted the router. I would not buy a router if I wanted a security stack; I would buy security software.
Palm trees and 8
Ahhhh, the answer is right there..... This is Slashdot. Half of it's purpose is to complain. Not that I'm complaining.....
That sinking feeling deep in your gut when you KNOW you screwed up bad summed up with: {head desk} {head desk}
"I dunno. Why do most consumers run back to a company that cheated them like a battered woman to her abuser?"
Because the sex is terrific, and they really WANT to change!
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I have the DIR-625 and have tested out the Secure-Spot (3.06) firmware and even when its disabled it still phones-home and uses an SSL connection. Naturally you can not issue it a fake certificate to see what its really sending back. Test setup: 2 Routers, Favorite ARP spoofing program and a Network Protocol Analyzer (I use Wireshark) and watch the fun when you power on your D-Link router.
What annoys be about my D-Link DSL-504T router is that although it runs some sort of customised GNU/Linux (I did "ssh admin@10.1.1.1" and had a look inside), their documentation and website make not the slightest mention of this, let alone make the source code available.
We live in a world where we have to automatically upgrade adobe PDF, java, windows, iTunes, firewalls, antiviruses, antispam, smartphones, wmv codecs, xvid codecs, divx codecs, everything HP ever produced, video game consoles, etc. Of course people automatically update their routers: it's what we've been conditioned to do.
The ______ Agenda
I was out there with torches and pitchforks but these two old farts complained that I was making too much noise and had me removed.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Just to point out, if you RTFP (post) mattytee doesn't say it's ok, he says it's "hinky." Which might NOT mean okay. I admit, I don't know what it ACTUALLY means, so it might mean "good."
It could be a typo for "kinky." Which, I can only imagine, would be included in the comprehensive list of fetishes.
A number of years ago in Canada, the cable companies started 'giving away' literally everyone in the country a month of viewing on any new speciality channel that came up. Then when the month was over they would start charging you for it. You had to 'opt out' at the end of the month if you didn't want it. So, you would get the trial without asking and then they would start charging you without asking. There was a HUGE outcry and the government quickly stepped in and put a stop to it, making the 'opt out or be charged' practice illegal... at least for cable companies.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
hinky: 1) Something as yet undefinable is wrong, out of place; not quite right; 2) "I've a bad feeling about that": something out of whack, wrong, off-kilter; 3) a state of being vaguely suspicious.
source: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hinky
this definition fits my previous (vague, contextual) knowledge of the term. some uses color towards sleazy, some towards kludgy; but they all have the general sense of something suspicious in some way.