The Internet of Compromised Things

An anonymous reader writes: Jeff Atwood has a post about a security threat that's becoming more prevalent every day: spreading malware through a compromised router. "Router malware is the ultimate man-in-the-middle attack. For all meaningful traffic sent through a compromised router that isn't HTTPS encrypted, it is 100% game over." He links to a thorough technical analysis of how even HTTPS encrypted traffic can be subverted. Atwood provides a list of suggestions for keeping your router safe that probably won't be any surprise to people reading this site, and he further recommends only browsing on an unknown router if encryption is available. What I'm curious about are the long-term implications — is there a way forward to re-establish trust in our router infrastructure? What can the open source community do to speed this along?

Comments

The entire friggin' internet is compromised

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Nevermind your own dinky router: any traffic you send on the internet is exploited by greedy "big data" companies and rogue 1984-style government agency. And encryption doesn't stop them from watching what you do...