Cursed site is auto playing a video that isnt even visible when on mobile.
This. Jesus fuck I thought I was going insane for a minute. Awful design.
Maybe because the US agencies have just not found their own backdoors into them…
wow, CNET has really gone to shit, hasn’t it?
three popups, including a full screen, autoplaying video, and banner
guess that’s going on my blocklist
They always sucked, they used to have a list of some software that I used and downloading through them inevitably got you multiple.other prompts for third party shit and random download buttons.
They’ve been bought out and gutted a couple times over. It’s very sad
Do Americans not have FritzBox routers for that crap to be the most popular router?
FR even though I hate Republicans and this admin when I saw this headline I thought “good shit, regulate the industry.”
- goverment warns about Wifi network secuirty
- PRISIM exists.
Billionaires buying children exist.
Good. TPLink makes cartoonishly insecure consumer grade equipment. A better solution is that the US establishes some minimum infosec standards for this equipment, but that would require time and thought.
Do you have any information to share about their bad security? I have a couple of their routers which seem to work quite well. Any I really at risk, and anymore than I would be with something from Linksys or Netgear?
Here are two new vulnerabilities from this month.
Here are some more exploits from 2023
Here are all the TPLink vulnerablies known publicly
Am I really at risk, and anymore than I would be with something from Linksys or Netgear?
As always, depends on your threat model. I have cheap TPLink switch in my home network because its cheap and kept behind a pfsense firewall. The TPLink switch is not allowed to talk to the internet. This is good enough for me as I don’t have a threat model where something attacks the switch from inside my network.
For completeness here are Cisco’s and Netgear’s vulnerabilities. Infosec security is a journey, not a destination.
Thank you for that! I’m keeping the cvedetails link bookmarked.
My two devices, the Archer BE9300 router and the TL-WA3001 AP aren’t listed with any known vulnerabilities, though I suppose it may be they haven’t been tested. The BE9300 is pretty popular though so that would be surprising.
The known vulnerabilities in their other devices don’t appear malicious or any worse than other common vendors either however. Given the state of the US government and its desire to monitor it’s citizens, I can’t decide if it’s contempt for TP-Link is a bad thing or not. They might just be mad they can’t get the vendor to give them a backdoor.
I will add the following:
US was looking at this before Trump took office (Dec 2024)
https://www.itpro.com/security/the-us-could-be-set-to-ban-tp-link-routers
TP Link’s sloppy security lead to the creation of a Chinese botnet.
https://cybernews.com/security/chinese-hackers-hijacked-thousands-of-tp-link-wifi-routers/
Replace the firmware on your current TPLink devices with OpenWRT, for a temporary solution.
OpenWRT is a permanent solution for older TP-Link routers. Their newer routers are locked down and not supported by OpenWRT.
A solution to what exactly? Nobody has provided any information about definitive risks.
An as OpenWRT goes it would either be a permanent solution or no solution at all. How would it be temporary?
Nowadays it wouldn’t surprise me if a secondary system was hidden on a chip on a router, meaning you could replace the main firmware and still be spied on, it’s better to have hardware you can trust top to bottom from the country you live in, but as far as what the risk cited by US officials is then it’s probably something like being used as a sleeper device that will later be included in massive botnet attacks like the AISURU botnet well documented to be made up of compromised consumer devices.
My money would have been on Cisco rather than TP-Link, though.
If you can, look for a mikrotik device, especially if you are in Europe. They are well established, not hard to use, but have extreme depth of features for advanced users, and they are not expensive.
I have one mikrotik poe AP I use and am quite happy with, but certainly not something I’d recommend for non-technical people because it’s firmware isn’t consumer friendly.
However my question is really what’s the real risk in using TP-Link devices. Neither the article or any of the comments link to any explanation of the actual risks. Is my network actually open to hackers now? Is my router able to be used for dos attacks or for other purposes now? Everyone is acting like their flaws are common knowledge and there’s zero info about genuine flaws or exploits.
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But that’s not really answering anything. Why? What makes their products more insecure or hackable than other brands? Like do they have ports open by defaults? Is the interface they use insecure and easily hacked? Or is this purely a “were not sure exactly but they probably have a back door”
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So the government is wiping it’s ass with TP-link, huh?
…holio
We don’t stand for Chinese surveillance in this country. Our surveillance shall be domestically produced or GTFO.
It’s not only about spying but about negligence. TP-LINK routers were found with many security issues and no patches. Some accuse them of do that porpose but might be negligence. Anyway they really do have bad security
Get a Protectlii vault with opnSense. Not horribly expensive and very very secure.
TP-Link is excellent for cheap switching hardware which a ton of vendors overprice for the same quality. Its your OG made in China deal that works pretty well for the price.
Otherwise, you should skip it as a router and instead opt for either a better AIO, or put in the 2 minutes of extra effort to get a cheap ethernet router and a separate AP because AIOs are still overrated in 2025 for the price per quality.
Not to mention that 5 GHz channels are getting clogged these days even on the DFS channels which people shouldn’t be using all the time. I know its not possible for a lot of people, but you’re really better off on even bargain basement maximum cheapo Cat-5e cables.
Gb WiFi speeds and MuMIMO not gonna matter when you have CSMA/CA throwing a metric ton of RTS and CTS packets causing increasing amounts of retries as you add stations.
Probably worst scenario is if you’re living in an apartment surrounded by like 50 stations within range. No amount of 802.11 magic is gonna give you a stable connection.
So what ae the best alternatives any of you would recommend?
Tbh any router that lets you replace the firmware with OpenWRT is pretty good, but only if there’s been an OpenWRT firmware version made for that very specific model.
Other than that, buy within your price range made within the last 2 years.
PC running OPNsense and a Ruckus AP.
TP Link is the Temu of routers. For decades they have been the “cheaper router” and it shows.
TP Link is just as bad at security as most other consumer electronics vendors:
Is there a way to jailbreak them and run them on Linux?
OpenWRT
My tplink archer has been running it for 5 years or more without issue*
*excluding human errors
OK, if it runs OpenWRT, what is their problem?
It depends who you’re trying to protect. Joe consumer doesn’t know what OpenWRT is.
Will this still allow a mesh setup?
You can basically do anything in OpenWRT, and if my memory is right a mesh setup is possible too. It may not be easy to setup, but it’s possible.
Thank you for the information.
Yes; it’s pretty trivial to flash something like OpenWRT on them as they don’t restrict what you can install whatsoever.
A possible ban on TP-Link routers – one of the most popular router brands in the US – is gaining momentum, as more than half a dozen federal departments and agencies back the proposal, according to a Washington Post report on Thursday
