I see. Replace "local access" control with "let anyone on the internet reconfigure the thing". Whoever's idea it was should be p*ssed on, keelhauled, drawn and quartered, then burned at the stake. --- () ascii ribbon campaign against html e-mail /\ www.asciiribbon.org
-----Original Message----- From: Sean Harlow [mailto:sean@seanharlow.info] Sent: Thursday, 05 July, 2012 10:26 To: Hank Nussbacher Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Cisco Update
On Jul 5, 2012, at 12:08, Hank Nussbacher wrote:
For those of us who have not kept up with every latest feature that Cisco rolls out across all its platforms, can someone explain this new service? Is it like Windows update, where Cisco will auto-update your router s/w and thereby brick it? If I don't register my router with Cisco, what do I lose? I can't update it manually?
Long story short, the affected routers (newer "Cisco" [former Linksys] consumer products) received an automatic firmware update which basically disables the device's onboard web UI and forces you to use Cisco's "cloud" management system. The biggest issue with this is that apparently it has some function, possibly for web filtering, which sends network traffic information of some sort to Cisco's service. They also state that regardless of the auto-update setting a device may be updated anyways if Cisco says so.
One article I found says it affects the E2700, E3500, and E4500 models.