Mastodawn

New by me: The FCC’s Router Crackdown Shouldn’t Surprise Anyone in Cybersecurity

This really did not come out of nowhere.

Consumer Wi-Fi routers have been showing up in botnets, proxy networks, and larger cybersecurity conversations for years. The FCC action is really the policy side of a problem security folks have been watching for a long time.

I wrote about the ruling, what it actually means, and why this is just as much a privacy story as it is a cybersecurity one.

https://www.kylereddoch.me/blog/the-fccs-router-crackdown-shouldnt-surprise-anyone-in-cybersecurity/

#Cybersecurity #Privacy #InfoSec #Networking

The FCC’s Router Crackdown Shouldn’t Surprise Anyone in Cybersecurity

The FCC’s latest router crackdown did not come out of nowhere. Consumer Wi-Fi routers have long been a privacy and cybersecurity risk.

CybersecKyle

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katzenberger 2d ago

@cyberseckyle

Many reasonable points, and still, the question remains where will people get those mysterious routers "Made in USA" from?

Not really an issue for me as a European, it's just that I have never heard of any US producer of customer-grade internet routers, on the market.

The current crackdown seems to amount to little more than: importers, actually we can't do without you, but please ask for our permission, model by model.

What am I missing?

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The Cyber Unc

@katzenberger That’s pretty close to my read too.

I don’t see this as “everyone now needs a U.S.-made router.” It looks more like a regulatory gate on new foreign-made models, while existing and previously authorized devices stay in play.

To me, the real question is whether this leads to better security standards, longer support lifecycles, and stronger vendor accountability. Geography alone does not fix weak firmware or poor patching.

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katzenberger 2d ago

@cyberseckyle

How is this supposed to work?

They're banning:

»Routers produced in a foreign country, except routers which have been granted a Conditional Approval by DoW or DHS.«

And if I'm not mistaken, their conditional approval list, as of today, contains just 4 drone models?

What teams exist in the DoW or DHS that will check incoming applications from router manufacturers? In a fashion that is as thorough as their alarming ban seems to necessitate?