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Final thoughts on Ubiquiti

krebsonsecurity.com

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Re: Final thoughts on Ubiquiti

#31

Post by InTheArena »

jonpurdy wrote: post #24

There was a lot of discussion from ex-Ubnt employees in a January 2021 thread※ related to outsourcing and incompetent management. From what I've read, they still show ads for their products in newer Unifi Controller web interfaces and don't have a way of disabling tracking. But now that the Krebs retraction has occurred, my brain doesn't know how bad/incompetent Ubiquiti is these days. Is there an updated-for-2022 so…

It's solidified incredibly over the last year. It no longer requires centralized login, no longer shows ads (or you can opt out of them. I don't see it one way or another).

More importantly, the network infrastructure has gotten much much better. I haven't had any stability issues other then testing our new early adopter firmware, and the first versions of policy based load balancing have landed.

Re: Final thoughts on Ubiquiti

#32

Post by obblekk »

Before people jump on this with super negativity... mistakes happen.

What is Krebs' false positive rate? I think low enough that a simple, clear explanation of why it happened is sufficient.

There's no weasel words or evasion here - he owns up to the error, apologizes to affected parties, and retracts all original posts.

It's true that his reporting probably caused stress for Ubiquity. I'm curious what people think is a fair system to compensate for that, without wiping out independent, generally high accuracy reporters like Krebs

Re: Final thoughts on Ubiquiti

#33

Post by xxpor »

user3939382 wrote: post #29

Ubiquiti is so worried about suing Krebs meanwhile their brand reputation has turned to mud due to the quality of their products, both from my own experience and the general consensus I've heard online. If this incident had never occurred I still would have stopped recommending and using their equipment.

The problem from my end though is, who really competes with them? No one else offers the same level of control at the same (or even close) price point.

Re: Final thoughts on Ubiquiti

#34

Post by ulrashida »

acoard wrote: post #6

An accurate but pretty lacklustre "mea culpa" and retraction. I don't mind people making mistakes, everyone does, but seeing how Krebs has handled this whole episode has not inspired optimism in how he'll handle future mistakes. He was essentially used as an unwitting party in a cyber blackmail scheme, and he doesn't touch on that at all. There will continue to be nefarious parties trying to misuse his reputation, so…

I think you're right, but it took me a few minutes to put my finger on what was missing.

There should have been a "going forward I will..." segment.

Re: Final thoughts on Ubiquiti

#35

Post by mattgreenrocks »

InTheArena wrote: post #31
jonpurdy wrote: post #24

There was a lot of discussion from ex-Ubnt employees in a January 2021 thread※ related to outsourcing and incompetent management. From what I've read, they still show ads for their products in newer Unifi Controller web interfaces and don't have a way of disabling tracking. But now that the Krebs retraction has occurred, my brain doesn't know how bad/incompetent Ubiquiti is these days. Is there an updated-for-2022 so…

It's solidified incredibly over the last year. It no longer requires centralized login, no longer shows ads (or you can opt out of them. I don't see it one way or another). More importantly, the network infrastructure has gotten much much better. I haven't had any stability issues other then testing our new early adopter firmware, and the first versions of policy based load balancing have landed.

Recent updates to the base UDM have been noticeably better than before. I don’t know what they’re doing differently but I hope they continue along this trajectory.

Re: Final thoughts on Ubiquiti

#36

Post by stickfigure »

blantonl wrote: post #12
acoard wrote: post #6

An accurate but pretty lacklustre "mea culpa" and retraction. I don't mind people making mistakes, everyone does, but seeing how Krebs has handled this whole episode has not inspired optimism in how he'll handle future mistakes. He was essentially used as an unwitting party in a cyber blackmail scheme, and he doesn't touch on that at all. There will continue to be nefarious parties trying to misuse his reputation, so…

This is about of straightforward as a "I screwed up, I own it, I apologize" Everyone makes mistakes. Some of the good work Krebs has done seems to be completely overshadowed by a mistake here. Granted, this is probably in response to some legal action either in progress or already settled, but what more do you want from the guy?

> what more do you want from the guy?

He's a guy who writes about hacks. He got "hacked". At the very least I am curious to know more of the story.

Re: Final thoughts on Ubiquiti

#37

Post by beams_of_light »

xxpor wrote: post #33
user3939382 wrote: post #29

Ubiquiti is so worried about suing Krebs meanwhile their brand reputation has turned to mud due to the quality of their products, both from my own experience and the general consensus I've heard online. If this incident had never occurred I still would have stopped recommending and using their equipment.

The problem from my end though is, who really competes with them? No one else offers the same level of control at the same (or even close) price point.

The old adage "you get what you pay for" applies here. Yeah, it's cheaper than buying Meraki, Aruba, Fortinet, etc, but the IDS/IPS on their Dream Machine is awful, logging is awful, reliability of anything but wireless gear is awful, Protect storage equipment is awful...

Re: Final thoughts on Ubiquiti

#38

Post by physhster »

I trust Krebs so I tossed every piece of my Ubiquiti gear I owned as a result. Ended up with a lesser solution since there isn't a good alternative on the market that would do for me everything Ubiquiti did.

Re: Final thoughts on Ubiquiti

#39

Post by InTheArena »

nerdponx wrote: post #28
riffic wrote: post #3

this reads like he got out-lawyered here. context for the unaware: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/03/ubiquiti-sues-jo...

Do I understand this correctly? There was a minor data breach at Ubiquiti. An employee named Sharp was using this as an opportunity to extort his employer and exfiltrate data. Sharp was telling Krebs some yarn about the data breach being bigger than reported, which Krebs then repeated on his blog, accusing Ubiquiti of covering up a more significant breach. And Ubiquiti is claiming that Krebs knew the truth all along.…

Sharp did the breach and then extorted Ubiquiti. Ubiquiti got the FBI involved and declined to pay off Sharp. Sharp followed through on his threat and disclosed everything to Kerbs, who wrote an article about it. The FBI and Ubiquiti were on to Sharp, but since Sharp was Kreb's only source, Krebs doubled down on the allegation with a series of articles, and then never retracted it (until now)

Re: Final thoughts on Ubiquiti

#40

Post by Covzire »

user3939382 wrote: post #29

Ubiquiti is so worried about suing Krebs meanwhile their brand reputation has turned to mud due to the quality of their products, both from my own experience and the general consensus I've heard online. If this incident had never occurred I still would have stopped recommending and using their equipment.

Personally I think Ubiquiti fared better than Krebs did in the reputation department. They were both victims in their way but Krebs should have retracted several months ago.
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