Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Critical Exploit in MediaTek Wi-Fi Chipsets: Zero-Click Vulnerability

blog.coffinsec.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–109 of 109 posts

Re: Critical Exploit in MediaTek Wi-Fi Chipsets: Zero-Click Vulnerability

#101

Post by AlotOfReading »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #99
jdietrich wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The consumer space is brutally competitive - you're working on tight margins and designs become obsolete very quickly. MediaTek's business is built on selling chips with the latest features at the lowest possible price. Everything has to be done at a breakneck pace that is dictated by the silicon. You start writing firmware as soon as the hardware design is finalised; it needs to be ready as soon as the chips are rea…

> you're working on tight margins and designs become obsolete very quickly. This seems like the exact place where open source is a competitive advantage. Step 1, open source your existing firmware for the previous generation hardware. The people who have the hardware now fix problems you didn't have the resources to fix. Step 2, fork the public firmware for the previous generation hardware when developing the next ge…

What happens in that case is that competitors copy your hardware and throw the open source firmware on it to undercut you. Consumers don't know how to differentiate your products without marketing/segmentation and OEMs mostly care about the BOM cost. It doesn't matter much that your competitors are 2-6 months behind because they're still killing the long tail sales that sustain a company.

Note that I'm still pro-open source, but I've seen this cycle play out in the real world enough times to understand why manufacturers are paranoid about releasing anything that might help a competitor, even if it benefits their customers.

Re: Critical Exploit in MediaTek Wi-Fi Chipsets: Zero-Click Vulnerability

#102

Post by tetris11 »

AStonesThrow wrote: post #98
tetris11 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Depending on the security policy, the user's PATH environment variable may be modified, replaced, or passed unchanged to the program that sudo executes. Essentially a "maybe, depending on what your OS policy is", proving that your comments are less than helpful.

Well, you are moving the goalposts like crazy, considering you were just executing a simple command with your original example, but let me search it and demonstrate the rest of it, rather than your Ctrl-F find one option in question: https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/noble/en/man8/sudo.8.ht... -E, --preserve-env --preserve-env=list -H, --set-home -i, --login -s, --shell The sudoers policy subjects environment vari…

Hey, thanks for the one extremely useful comment!

Re: Critical Exploit in MediaTek Wi-Fi Chipsets: Zero-Click Vulnerability

#104

Post by tuetuopay »

RedShift1 wrote: post #90
tuetuopay wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried them further than "I don't trust MediaTek"? I've had sequentially an Intel and an AMD ThinkPad for work (I killed the first one). Turns out, the wifi is much much better on the AMD one with the MediaTek chipset than on the Intel one with the Intel chipset. On the latter, I had very frequent disconnects from the network (severals per hour) along with atrocious latency even on 5GHz. And by atrocious late…

The laptops run Windows. It's not about trust, they just don't work well. They take a long time to connect, particularly after returning from sleep. Many times I have to disconnect and reconnect manually after returning from sleep. I replace them with Intel Wi-Fi ones and it just works. I'd really rather just replace them than face user complaints.

Urgh. Kudos to you, that’s no easy task. And this might explain a lot, I’ve never liked the WiFi experience in windows. I find Linux with IWD to be stable as hell

Re: Critical Exploit in MediaTek Wi-Fi Chipsets: Zero-Click Vulnerability

#105

Post by Woodi »

Retr0id wrote: post #91
AStonesThrow wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the day, shell coders would receive the "Useless Use Of Cat" award. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23341711 Today it's giving way to "useless use of su" where admins aren't aware of sudo(8) options like "-s" or "-i"

And anyone who points that out still gets to receive the "useless use of code golfing" award.

'sudo su' is pure absurd but then how name naming it a "golf" ?? :)))

So maybe Perl is not so write-only after all ? ;)

Re: Critical Exploit in MediaTek Wi-Fi Chipsets: Zero-Click Vulnerability

#106

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

vlovich123 wrote: post #79
1oooqooq wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you managed to completely miss the point. going the pc route is fully embracing your hardware accept whatever software the user wants. not throw unbuildable source somewhere and make it impossible to use. that's the faux open source we have today when someone must comply with the gpl or something

I think you happened to miss the point about regulatory requirements that make this difficult/impossible to accomplish for the radio vendor. I think the proliferation of SDR is the only hope to change the broader regulatory culture but until that happens you're not going to see a shift. I think it's also rich calling GPL compliance faux open source. There really is no true Scotsman.

What are those regulatory requirements, and what do they say?

Thank you.

Re: Critical Exploit in MediaTek Wi-Fi Chipsets: Zero-Click Vulnerability

#107

Post by vlovich123 »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #106
vlovich123 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you happened to miss the point about regulatory requirements that make this difficult/impossible to accomplish for the radio vendor. I think the proliferation of SDR is the only hope to change the broader regulatory culture but until that happens you're not going to see a shift. I think it's also rich calling GPL compliance faux open source. There really is no true Scotsman.

What are those regulatory requirements, and what do they say? Thank you.

https://apps.fcc.gov/kdb/GetAttachment.html?id=zXtrctoj6zH7o...

Manufacturers of radios have to prevent the ability to behave in a non-compliant manner. One way of accomplishing that is preventing the user from updating software to non-official versions. Another is to prevent the small subset of functionality to be updated by non-official versions. This isn't a new requirement and has been around since forever.

Re: Critical Exploit in MediaTek Wi-Fi Chipsets: Zero-Click Vulnerability

#108

Post by hakfoo »

userbinator wrote: post #8
1oooqooq wrote: post #7

i still cannot fathom why in this day and age where people buy any silicon that's available, these C tier vendors don't adopt the PC strategy and completely open their firmwares for open source community.

FCC regulations around not making it easy to transmit outside of the licensed band tend to cause this.

It feels like they're using software as a solution to a hardware problem.

No matter what the software says, or what keys it has set, the hardware should still be hard-configured to honour regional power output limits. This could be something like a block of DIP switches under the cover, so if a user unbolts the case, finds the switch, and toggles it to some country with looser requirements, it's obviously going against manufacturer advice and washes their hands of liability.

Re: Critical Exploit in MediaTek Wi-Fi Chipsets: Zero-Click Vulnerability

#109

Post by AnthonyMouse »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #101
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you're working on tight margins and designs become obsolete very quickly. This seems like the exact place where open source is a competitive advantage. Step 1, open source your existing firmware for the previous generation hardware. The people who have the hardware now fix problems you didn't have the resources to fix. Step 2, fork the public firmware for the previous generation hardware when developing the next ge…

What happens in that case is that competitors copy your hardware and throw the open source firmware on it to undercut you. Consumers don't know how to differentiate your products without marketing/segmentation and OEMs mostly care about the BOM cost. It doesn't matter much that your competitors are 2-6 months behind because they're still killing the long tail sales that sustain a company. Note that I'm still pro-open…

> What happens in that case is that competitors copy your hardware and throw the open source firmware on it to undercut you.

The entire premise of firmware is that it's specific to the hardware. By the time they "copy your hardware" it's already obsolete. Also, that's the thing you're actually selling. Your firmware sucks. Nobody wants your firmware unless they have your hardware. People are paying you for the hardware, which is the thing cheap competitors can't make as well as you or you're already screwed.

Post reply on HN