yes and more. There are a large number of routers that are designed to revert to a backup copy of firmware and configuration.
An attack would involve making electrical service cycle its voltage 3 times in succession,
thus causing reversion to a default mode. The majority of routers would be in Out of the Box State, and highly pwnable.
It is very conveinient that 3phase power can provide 3 surges of ~60vac if the correct attack is used on a generation station, or inter-tie station.
if you are of the 3rd party firmware persuasion, you should flash your router configure, and then flash again, so your backup will be a secure firmware with a secure configuration.
Among the things router manufacturers should do is change this aforementioned behaviour to something like 5 failed reboot attempts in succession, rather than 3 reboot attempts.
rolph's reply to this seems a bit... off the rails.
This part makes me think it's all a big conspiracy theory:
> such a router will have two instances of flashed firmware and you can toggle between the instances by flicking the power switch [3times] rapidly so you produce 3 boot failures. this is true in the case of linksys routers and many others but not all, so read often, implement successfully the first time.
I recently purchased a high-end Linksys router and flashed OpenWRT on it so I know exactly what he's talking about. Like modern smartphones, they have two firmware partitions, A and B. When you are booted into the A partition and download an update, it is applied to the B partition. On the next boot the device uses the B partition and then eventually applies the same update to the A partition. This means that updates can be applied without having to restart the device and wait a long time for the flash, and it also means that the device can revert to the A partition if there was an error updating the B partition. That's why it was added a few years ago to Android.
This is explicitly advertised as in the marketing for newer high-end routers (and other things, like computer motherboards).
In OpenWRT you actually have to manually flash both partitions - update the router, reboot into the other partition, and then update again to apply it to the first partition. Which seems to be what rolph is talking about when he mentions flashing updates twice to be a deterrent to this exploit. What doesn't make sense is that rolph implied that the fix of flashing twice applied to all devices.
- On devices with dual firmwares, the stock firmware flashes updates twice to complete the update process
- On devices with one firmware but a secret evil firmware, the evil firmware will not be affected by updates, so flashing a new firmware twice will not fix the exploit (which is the opposite of what rolph said)
I would assume high-end older routers do contain a backup stock firmware that can be loaded after multiple failed boots, just like Windows will boot to recovery mode if it fails to boot a few times.
The sort of evil hack that can occur, was not possible until it became possible for the control systems of industrial settings to be hacked, by foriegn or domestic elements. I live in a place that has very inconsistent power and i use a UPS to feed my router, that is also a way to mitigate a hack of this sort. Keep in mind that power generation has to be hacked and manipulated, and the major hack would be a followup or an opportunist piggybacking on the first attack, sniffing the DSL environment for open router ports, and exploiting.
have a look here Re firmware and model compatabilities:
this is a table of compatible devices and firmware. The site itself is about open WRT and hosts "apps" to run on your router as network services. It is possible to turn your router into something other than a router [including a paper wieght if your not careful] so read up on what you have, what you want to do, and what you need to do that.
keep in mind im trying to be as general as possible, so you need to do a bit of reading about your router, and what options you have.
make sure you have a backup router, and or all your ducks in a row, as you will not have a router if something goes wrong. The revert feature is usefull if you have that sort of router, the feature itsself is not a bad[evil] thing, the problem is that sucessive power cycling can revert your router to factory configuration and leave your system quite vulnerable to followup attack. this is why you make sure you know what you are doing, flash your router properly, configure it to be secure but open to you , then flash it again with the same firmware and configure it. if it all works properly, you will have a router that reverts to a secure firmware and configuration, instead of factory firmware.
such a router will have two instances of flashed firmware and you can toggle between the instances by flicking the power switch [3times] rapidly so you produce 3 boot failures. this is true in the case of linksys routers and many others but not all, so read often, implement successfully the first time.
The sort of evil hack that can occur, was not possible until it became possible for the control systems of industrial settings to be hacked, by foriegn or domestic elements. I live in a place that has very inconsistent power and i use a UPS to feed my router, that is also a way to mitigate a hack of this sort. Keep in mind that power generation has to be hacked and manipulated, and the major hack would be a followup or an opportunist piggybacking on the first attack, sniffing the DSL environment for open router ports.
so how does this fit into the original topic?
When you interrupt power and cause blackouts you create an opportunity for F.U.D. secondarily messing around with everyones router at gross scale furthers the FUD and opens the door for MITM and consequent manipulation of psychological/ emotional state.
Some doctors (many disagree) speculate that microwave weapons are the "prime suspect" in Cuba's [1] and China's [2] embassy attacks in the recent years.
What struck me in the article was Frey's: “Based on what I know, it will remain a mystery.”
I am skeptic on the fact that it was specifically microwaves (but also on the hypothesis it was crickets [3]), but who knows?
From what we know whole-nation influence trough electrical grid seems far-fetched, but if trough EM radiation you could trigger action potentials in the auditory system, maybe it would be possible to do that to the limbic system as well.
