Third Party Firmware Security

[paragoon]

I've read a lot of good things about Voxel's firmware for the Netgear routers, and am considering installing it on my newly purchase R7800. I have a basic/naive question about third party firmwares in general: How do you go about ensuring that your data and everything is secured? I.e., that the firmware creator hasn't implemented a backdoor or some such. Not calling out Voxel, he seems like a stand up guy, but do most people just take a leap of faith and assume that the firmware is safe to use?

 

[Killhippie]

I've read a lot of good things about Voxel's firmware for the Netgear routers, and am considering installing it on my newly purchase R7800. I have a basic/naive question about third party firmwares in general: How do you go about ensuring that your data and everything is secured? I.e., that the firmware creator hasn't implemented a backdoor or some such. Not calling out Voxel, he seems like a stand up guy, but do most people just take a leap of faith and assume that the firmware is safe to use?

His Firmware is available to examine on Github so many others would have found bad code in there if there was. Voxel is trustworthy, he has been doing code for the R7800 R9000 for a long time now, nobody has a bad thing to say and there are highly knowledgable people here who would have picked up on his firmware if it was unsafe.

I used it on my R7800 with no ill effects and it really improved performance and I recommend his firmware to R7800 users. Voxel is one of the trustworthy developers like RMerlin (Asus firmware) Voxel has also had his firmware up on myopenrouter, and once again people would have seen bad code there. Make sure you update from Voxel's site and don't vet confused with XVortex, I would not trust this persons firmware at all personally. That's based on the fact he took DumaOS and made it available for the R7800 which is probably not allowed by Netgear or Netduma. You will be fine using Voxel's work.

 

[Voxel]

Killhippie thank you ;-)

I have a basic/naive question about third party firmwares in general: How do you go about ensuring that your data and everything is secured? I.e., that the firmware creator hasn't implemented a backdoor or some such. Not calling out Voxel, he seems like a stand up guy, but do most people just take a leap of faith and assume that the firmware is safe to use

Your question is not naive but IMO is quite natural. It is normal to take care of own safety and security of your data.

Most safe way is really to build your own version. Using GPL codes I published. But is is not so easy if you are not professional developer. In general too many people are using my version already long time so if I would add backdoor or trojan it would be detected by my users. Yes, it is some kind of trust. But really such illegal things are not interesting to me and I have real fun building fw working good and fast and built from source codes

Anyway I do recommend to use the version downloaded from my site but not from other sites.

Voxel.

 

[jsmiddleton4]

The other thing is VOXEL's FW is not really "third party". Its more like an enhancement. DD-WRT is "third party".

 

[Voxel]

The other thing is VOXEL's FW is not really "third party". Its more like an enhancement. DD-WRT is "third party".

No. I am not from NG. So it is third party. For example RMerlin makes his versions (enhancement) for ASUS routers basing on ASUS' asuswrt SDK. But his FW is third party firmware.

Voxel.

 

[jsmiddleton4]

If you say so. You and RMerlin are building on the core that is also the released FW. DD-WRT is not.

 

[e38BimmerFN]

Any FW not officially released by Router Mfr IS 3rd Party FW. Core FW is some cases is GPL which some Router Mfrs, DD-WRT and OpenWRT build upon.

 

[sfx2000]

Any FW not officially released by Router Mfr IS 3rd Party FW. Core FW is some cases is GPL which some Router Mfrs, DD-WRT and OpenWRT build upon.

Firmware publicly published... with a verified source...

github or other...

openwrt - yes - https://github.com/openwrt
asuswrt-rmerlin - yes - https://github.com/RMerl
dd-wrt - subversion mirror here - https://github.com/mirror/dd-wrt

Netgear and Opensource - they're there to some degree

https://www.myopenrouter.com/netgear-opensource-central

 

[ablatt]

Where exactly on github can the latest version of the Voxel firmware be found?

 

[e38BimmerFN]

https://www.voxel-firmware.com

Where exactly on github can the latest version of the Voxel firmware be found?

 

[ablatt]

https://www.voxel-firmware.com

That's the firmware itself. But where is the .62SF source on github?

 

[e38BimmerFN]

Hopefully Voxel can answer that for you.

That's the firmware itself. But where is the .62SF source on github?

 

[kamoj]

Maybe you find it using your favourite search engine.
I tried google:
https://github.com/SVoxel

Where exactly on github can the latest version of the Voxel firmware be found?

 

[Voxel]

That's the firmware itself. But where is the .62SF source on github?

The command

git clone https://github.com/SVoxel/R7800

should provide you concrete .62SF source codes. Not tagged now, but today (11 Jan 2019) it is 1.0.2.62SF.

Voxel.