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Cisco's Cloud Vision: Mandatory, and Killed At Their Discretion
An anonymous reader writes "Last week, a number of Cisco customers began reporting problems with three specific Linksys-branded routers. When owners of the E2700, E3500, are E4500 attempted to log in to their devices, they were asked to login/register using their 'Cisco Connect Cloud' account information. The story that's emerged from this unexpected "upgrade" is a perfect example of how buzzword fixation can lead to extremely poor decisions."
"The Terms and Conditions of using the Cisco Connect Cloud state that Cisco may unilaterally shut down your account if finds that you have used the service for 'obscene, pornographic, or offensive purposes, to infringe anotherâ(TM)s rights, including but not limited to any intellectual property rights, or⦠to violate, or encourage any conduct that would violate any applicable law or regulation or give rise to civil or criminal liability.'" ---- So basically they'll be watching what we do, and if they don't like it, then they turn-off your Cisco account. Time to add Cisco to my ever-growing list of bad companies:
- Cisco
- Microsoft
- GM
- Ford
- Toyota
- et cetera
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
(100 watts) * 1 year = 876.581277 kilowatt hours
Not free. Look for the routers that can run an open source platform out of the box.
Count on it...then you don't 'Own' the router you merely pay a fee for the hardware but it wont do much until it connects to the internet to get the latest version of the software. And if you somehow get a 3rd party software to run on it they could then start DMCA proceedings against you. They won't provide services or updates unless you allow to remain connected to the internet. They will absolutely monetize your routing history
Beware the Lollipop of Mediocrity, Lick it once and you suck forever.
Sadly, most folks won't even know about it (or they will have had it sold to them as a good thing(TM, pat.pending). )
This means that most folks will happily continue buying the stupid things as if nothing at all is wrong with doing so. Your only hope os to persuade otherwise, word-of-mouth.
Of course, if you spread this news on enough pr0n sites ("Cisco collects all your browsing information!"), I'm willing to bet that Cisco would likely have their small routers division go bankrupt almost overnight...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
It may not be legal, but if the rewards outweigh the fines then companies really do not give a shit if it is legal or not.
The fines are most likely less than the fine for illegally downloading music.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Cisco's Vice President and General Manager of Home Networking, Brett Wingo said, "Cisco Connect Cloud was delivered only to consumers who opted into automatic updates. However, we apologize that the opt-out process for Cisco Connect Cloud and automatic updates was not more clear in this product release, and we are developing an updated version that will improve this process."
OK, so if I don't buy a Cisco router, do you consider that opting out . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
And why do they want to collect data? To push more ads at you. Another poster joked about a "Facebook router," that would push ads at you, and there's another story on the /. front page about Google, and their business model of providing search...so they can push ads at you.
I'm not a knee-jerk "if you're in advertising you should kill yourself!" reactionary, but damn...how is that that the bleeding edge of technology and innovation today, some of the most valuable companies in the world like Google and Facebook...they're not sending men to mars to building flying cars. The best and the brightest and "most innovative" go to work...figuring out better and better ways to sell advertising. It's kind of depressing.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
That's the word the wonderful MBAs use these days. The real meaning of course, is a small short term increase in profit, and a long term effect of turning your former customers against you. They're not concerned about that last part, as they've generally moved on to 'help' the next company.
I'd like to thank you for making my next router decision easier. This time around, I had to consider a number of options, your E4200 one of them. In the end, I chose to get it. The combo of simplicity, high speed, and generally low cost made it a winner rather than trying to hack together my own or something like that.
However next time around, you are out of the running. I won't look at your products as this kind of setup is completely unacceptable to me.
So thanks for making my choices simpler. Less options can actually be much easier.
You still need a wireless radio.
I've found the internal wireless NICs have a range equal to the radius of a swung cat.
This has forced me to get a cheap wifi access point, (or a router that can be told to just run as an access point) and use it for
its radio only. I run my own DHCPD, DNS, Nat and IPTables, NTP, (etc) in a Linux box, and bridge my network onto a cheap ($25) ap that can do WPA2.
Since I run it in access point mode, it does nothing but handle wifi authentication and wifi access, it remains rather simple, and I really need only watch for bug fixes to WPA2.
I've been looking into various Open Router distributions for the radio side of things, but most are overkill for what I do.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
"This is nothing but a shameless attempt to cash in on the popularity of cloud computing, and it comes at a price. The Terms and Conditions of using the Cisco Connect Cloud state that Cisco may unilaterally shut down your account if finds that you have used the service for "obscene, pornographic, or offensive purposes, to infringe another's rights, including but not limited to any intellectual property rights, or... to violate, or encourage any conduct that would violate any applicable law or regulation or give rise to civil or criminal liability.""
This is an end run by the RIAA/MPAA, with the participation of CISCO, to bring anti-piracy measures to your router. Your own router can/will now be used against you to collect evidence of infringement (and who knows what else), as well as giving CISCO full rights of enforcement. Fuck that.
In the future, I will be looking carefully for CISCO branding on products, the sole intention being that of avoidance--CISCO will not be getting any money from me again...ever.
Sticking with a duopoly brand is no assurance of them being secure. This story should have made that patently obvious to you.
Moving everything off the router except the secure wifi functionality and putting it into my Linux machine running IPTables means that I can use any of these cheap routers that is able to function as an Access Point, and never expose them to the internet.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
"Through the web interface I could set up a couple of VLANs, DHCP, DNS forwarding, firewall, a PPTP VPN connection, and a DMZ (if necessary) on them in a couple of hours, a set of tasks that would take a $250/hr CCNA most of a day on order-of-magnitude more expensive Cisco hardware."
I, er, think I can guess why Cisco may have "simplified" the interface of certain linksys products...
Sometimes freedom is not cheap. Would you rather buy a cheap router with this onerous shit, or roll your own, paying a bit more in the process, to end up with a device that you fully control?
FC Closer
"Generate direct revenue from some aspect of a project or service that we previously overlooked or were giving away free." The problem is that this is too long and does not adequately hide the actual meaning.
I mean, what a great opportunity for malware distribution, sabotage, spying, etc... Just connect to every "Linksys" router you can find and "upgrade" its firmware yourself! (change them all to DD-WRT, maybe?).
Since experience tells us that mechanisms like this are rarely, if ever, properly secured, this seems like a major security catastrophe in addition to a privacy debacle. Even if sound cryptography and digital signatures are employed to make sure the updates are valid, there may be implementation flaws in the routers, vulnerabilities in Cisco's upgrade servers, key leakage, bad protocol design, etc.
Wow.