[kwlug-disc] [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: OpenWRT

[Paul Gallaway]

On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 2:19 PM, Paul Gallaway <paul at gallaway.ca> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 1:38 PM, CrankyOldBugger
>> My question is.. would openWRT negate the backdoor, or is the problem a bit
>> deeper in the router?
>
> I think it would negate the issue, and seeing as the router I just
> bought is on that list I have a vested interested in confirming it is
> not vulnerable. My thought is that since OpenWRT is compiled from
> sources using modules supplied by the linux kernel, it's about as safe
> as it can ever be made. That's why I choose OpenWRT over DD-WRT,
> Tomato, and all the other WRT variants. My understanding of the
> inner-workings of the hardware and how the kernel interacts with all
> the bits of silicon in the device is limited, so if I'm flat out
> wrong, someone please tell me!

OK, responding to my own email with evidence. Is that bad form?
Assuming you trust user 'hackru' on OpenWRT, based on this similar
looking backdoor for a different device, it looks like replacing
compromised firmware with OpenWRT would negate the backdoor. That also
assumes you trust the OpenWRT project not to introduce any, or that
the binaries/source on OpenWRT servers have not been compromised
introducing some.
https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?pid=241085#p241085

I'll still try Khalid's test and report back.