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Final thoughts on Ubiquiti

krebsonsecurity.com

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Re: Final thoughts on Ubiquiti

#181

Post by hot_gril »

dotBen wrote: post #150
hot_gril wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody competes with them as 'Apple for networking' Apple used to ;_; I was still using my Airport Expresses until they gave out. Didn't care if they didn't have the latest wifi standards, they were way easier to manage than Ubiquiti or anything else.

The founder of Ubiquiti used to be a radio engineer on the AirPort product at Apple. Part of the reason he left was because the line became devalued in Apple's product lineup and would ultimately be shelved.

Interesting, I didn't know that. Apple lost a great engineer!

Re: Final thoughts on Ubiquiti

#182

Post by beermonster »

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.

No one. Sadly!

Re: Final thoughts on Ubiquiti

#183

Post by thesausageking »

ganoushoreilly wrote: post #178
thesausageking wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubiquiti lost $4B in market cap based on this one, poorly sourced post Krebs wrote. He then waited 9 months after he knew it was lies to correct and only does it in the most muted, begrudging way possible. This is completely unethical behavior for a writer.

I don't think it's fair to attribute their losses directly to Krebs. While this instance is in their favor, Ubiquiti have been doing plenty on their own to alienate their client base. Half backed software updates, pushing products in new verticals without delivering on existing prodcuts. It's clear that there are still issues within Ubiquiti that aren't washed away by this "breach". They're attempting to be enterpris…

It went down by $4B the day after he published his post. A one day drop isn't about their products or how they treat their customers.

Re: Final thoughts on Ubiquiti

#184

Post by johncalvinyoung »

Melatonic wrote: post #163
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #111

If there's one thing I really hope people take away from this entire story is not to use security researchers' statements in constant appeals to authority. I hear so many questionable-to-bad takes on cyber security that basically amount to Bruce Schneier, Brian Krebs, or Troy Hunt said so, so you're absolutely wrong if you don't obey them. It's really important to remember security researchers and experts convey what…

I agree - and while I certainly trust the people you listed quite a bit it is important to not elevate anyone to cult status or revered leader type stuff. I think we can trust that they have more authority than most but that does not make them the authority.

Of that list, I'll listen to Schneier or Hunt way before Krebs.

And that was before this story.

Re: Final thoughts on Ubiquiti

#185

Post by phoboslab »

obblekk wrote: post #32

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 i…

> What is Krebs' false positive rate?

You only ever hear about it when he gets high profile cases wrong.

When my project was targeted by him, he ended up going down some conspiracy rabbit hole and doxed all the wrong people. This forced me to issue a correction - mission accomplished, I guess.

During his "investigation" he accidentally sent an email that was meant for his business partner to some of my friends. It offered a glimpse into his sensationalist mindset. I don't have much respect for that guy.

Re: Final thoughts on Ubiquiti

#186

Post by initplus »

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?

Brian is a journalist more than he is a security researcher, anything he publishes as a journalist should be held to held to a higher standard than an random person just speaking their mind. He had ample opportunity to get out ahead and issue a retraction of the story when it was known to be false, well before the Ubiquiti lawsuit.

Re: Final thoughts on Ubiquiti

#187

Post by nottorp »

nottorp wrote: post #83
InTheArena wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes. You do not need any cloud login at this point.

They saw the light :) I have an older device (first in 5 Ghz I think) and I was beginning to think I should upgrade it to .

Hmm I just redownloaded the 'unifi network' thingy.

For one I had to go through a screen of threats telling me I shouldn't use a local application that only reminds me of the threats you have to go through when downloading the LGPL version of Qt.

For two, the app is incomprehensible, it wanted me to create a "local administrator account" after i opted out of an online account and then it didn't find my old unifi ap that is working just fine thank you.

So nope. Still unacceptable, sorry.

Note: I still have an old version of their admin app on an old computer and that one just finds the AP and lets me configure it. So if they could do it 10 years ago they could do it now too, should they wish to.

Note 2: Why do they want my email even for a "local administrator" account?

Note 3: If i click through all the crap it does find my UAP-AC but it says "managed by another console"? With no way of taking control of it. What the... i haven't started the old management app in years.

Looks like besides threatening their customers they have gone enterprise.

Re: Final thoughts on Ubiquiti

#188

Post by jpgvm »

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 read this as a post probably vetted by his legal team and probably not issued earlier because of the ongoing legal action (and then probably subsequent negotiations with Ubiquiti).

He absolutely fucked up here but he probably can't say so and likely wasn't able to retract sooner less he open himself up to legal culpability for his part in the blackmail scheme (unwitting or not).

Unfortunately this is just how the world works. I hope he has learnt his lesson and will be more through in his vetting of his sources and how his reputation can be misappropriated by malicious actors to do very serious harm.

Re: Final thoughts on Ubiquiti

#189

Post by james_in_the_uk »

mardifoufs wrote: post #68
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...

I wonder what has changed? The original thread discussing the lawsuit was filled with super dismissive comments, arguing that ubiquity lawyers were incompetent and had no actual way to win the case. Some of the commenters were supposedly actual lawyers too, so it's not even just the normal "terrible armchair law advice" we are used to from HN.

Perhaps Krebs has chosen to move on with his life. Defending litigation is often expensive, distracting and stressful, even if you think you have a strong case. The law isn't necessarily always as pugilistic as Hollywood might lead you to believe. Perfectly fine to think you are right, say you were wrong, settle the case and move on. Of course, we have no way to know what Krebs really thinks or what actually went on behind closed doors here. We should take the written statement at face value, exactly as written. No more no less.

Re: Final thoughts on Ubiquiti

#190

Post by bombcar »

andrewaylett wrote: post #142
IncRnd wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a failure across many journalists Only one journalist was involved here. I think you meant "failing of many journalists" not "failure across many". > The amount of scrutiny applied to a source is inversely proportional with how much I want to believe the source. Why do you disbelieve a source that has been greatly scrutinized? Did you mean "directly proportional"?

The sense I read from the GP is that if I want to believe the source, I'm less likely to apply strict scrutiny to what they tell me. The more I want to believe, the less I'll dig into what I'm hearing. Some things are just too good to not believe.

Exactly. Krebs did it himself (doubling down on his "source" even as evidence began to come to light that the source was not clean) and we as commentators do also (the original posts are filled with "the software sucks because of X, Y, and Z so this is obviously true).
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