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That ough to be one of the laziest genAI slop images for a "Chinese router with a backdoor".
Damn, it's bad.
Yeah that one is fairly hideous. Why can't they just use a product shot?
Here you go btw 
therapist: the mimo spider can't get you the mimo spider:
A report of China obviously and illegally spying on large amounts of people (not only in the USA I might add), and that's the top comment?
I mean, it was assumed and mostly known that it was taking place already. Thats why the government tried to prevent them from being sold in the US. Did anyone really think they were going to give up on spying on world citizens when they were forced to sell TikTok?
No. But a hardware backdoor is a big step from whatever TikTok is doing. And I know it's not the first one either, but still, the disclosure of each and every one deserves attention.
That flag. Ugh.
There was a time when by facebook wall was plastered with AI slop articles, and all of them had flags chucked in like this.
Something the US has in common with China, they intercepted network gear and installed backdoors too while also demanding backdoors be installed in regular consumer devices. Plus the telecom/ISP secret surveillance rooms... Both countries governments are evil.
I guess the hack is to get one from the other country, because they can theoretically do less with the data.
Every time I mention this being a risk with Chinese tech I get flamed.
The CCP effectively controls every chinese company. If they want backdoors, they get backdoors.
I say that as a centre-left European who has just as much criticism for American tech.
Not sure why you're telling me that like especially as I'm essentially saying they are the opposite sides of the same fucked up coin. I'd say the fundamental difference is on the western side it's the child raping Epstein class is who is behind it all and who are actively working to make our lives more miserable driven by immense obsession of power and wealth. The Chinese side is more if defacto state operation which isn't benefiting a few greedy sickos but rather maintaining the whole status quo for the state. Neither should exists, both countries are a threat to the rest of the world, though the Americans have tilted the evil scale more towards themselves at this point in time. And in Europe we're now worried the US will flip a switch to cut us off from all cloud services too, besides spying on us, sabotage us and threatening invasion. China is somewhat less extreme now, but still undermining us and spying on is nonetheless. A swinging pendulum of who is more evil that I wish would turn into a wrecking ball and free us of this insanity.
At least in the west the companies can fight back, like Apple has done a few times. In China the government can force companies to do their bidding.
Cisco has been willingly doing this for eons, there's a reason my routers an WAPs run pfsense/openwrt with switches from mikrotik.
Cisco has been willingly doing this for eons, there's a reason my routers an WAPs run pfsense/openwrt with switches from mikrotik.
Which router companies fight back? Or computer hardware in general? Anybody with a warrant canary?
Apple makes computers? You can turn an Apple computer into a router in 10 minutes using docker
Another case of: use an American router against the Chinese backdoor behind a Chinese router against the American backdoor.
(Or just do open source)
throw an Indian router, an Israeli router and a Turkish router into the chain for extra security
oh COME ON. The last thing I needed in this jingoistic American economy was any reason to legitimize their crap
Do you mean, legitimize the USA being anti-China?
I think it's important to remember that the USA aren't the only bad player on the globe.
We can be against China without being pro MAGA.
In this case, I was thinking of how this could be used to legitimize the decision a couple months ago to block the sale of all foreign-made routers.
(The decision is a terrible one, but I imagine MAGA people will use it to say "I told you so" while ignoring the fact that foreign brand Netgear got an exemption and at least temporary monopoly status.)
At least they should have good openwrt support!
If its at the hardware level openwrt won't help.
It isn't.
What are the chances this is some misguided customer support tool or someone screwing up?
I'd think if this was a deliberate attempt for hacking they'd at least have a proper authentication challenge. You wouldn't want your enemies to have access to your toys too. No matter how socialist you are haha.
If it were, they wouldn't have tried to disguise it as a kworker
But can i put pfsense or something on it?
this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2026
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