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Linksys Velop routers send Wi-Fi passwords in plaintext to US servers (stackdiary.com)

submitted 4 months ago by skilledtothegills@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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During installation, the router sent several data packets to an Amazon server in the US. These packets contained the configured SSID name and password in clear text, as well as some identification tokens for this network within a broader database and an access token for a user session that could potentially enable a MITM attack.

Linksys has refused to acknowledge/respond to the issue.

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[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 76 points 4 months ago (9 children)

Two important points raised:

Why is Linksys sending your Wifi details, as well as your private password, outside of your home
If they're doing it, why are they sending your critically important private information unencrypted onto the public internet

The answer to the first one may be semi-legit as these are mesh products. As in, the other nodes in the mesh will need this information, and it appears that Linksys has decided to store your security data in AWS for the other mesh nodes to retrieve it when you're setting it up. I'd sure as hell like to know this before the product does this. Further, I'd much prefer to simply attached to each mesh node myself to input the secured credentials instead of sending them outside to the internet.

There's not excuse for Linksys sending the creds unencrypted onto the internet.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 months ago (6 children)

I'm just finding no confirmation that they send them unencrypted over the Internet and I've seen "researchers" calling sending passwords over HTTPS "unencrypted."

Mesh coordination is interesting. It's not great. That said I doubt that any off-the-shelf consumer mesh system does go through the work to keep things local-only. It's too easy to setup a cloud API and therefore likely all of them do that since it's the cheapest.

[–] 0x0@programming.dev 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

calling sending passwords over HTTPS “unencrypted.”

The channel is encrypted, the content is not. It is a password, why would they need it?

[–] theneverfox@pawb.social 1 points 4 months ago

Because now they have your login and password - not a hashed version they can only validate against, but the real thing that can be used to log into your network. They shouldn't ever have it, aside from them being able to sell credentials this also means someone else could probably obtain access to all of them

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