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October 16th, 2015 
Awake Goy A coalition of 260 cybersecurity experts is taking advantage of a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) public comment period to push for open source Wi-Fi router firmware.
The cybersecurity experts asked the FCC on Wednesday to require router makers to open-source their firmware, or the basic software that controls its core functionality, as a condition for it being licensed for use in the US. The request comes amid a wider debate on how the FCC should ensure that Wi-Fi routers’ wireless signals don’t “go outside stated regulatory rules” and cause harmful interference to other devices like cordless phones, radar, and satellite dishes.
The experts reasoned that closed-source router firmware could expose users across the internet to security vulnerabilities. If these routers’ firmware were open source, the thinking goes, the wider community of experts and developers could work together to battle vulnerabilities without having to wait for router makers to release a patch—if they bother to do so at all.
“In our letter, the scientists and engineers most deeply concerned with the internet have finally spoken with one voice, loud enough, maybe, to make a difference,” Dave Taht, co-founder of Bufferbloat, an initiative to improve router performance, told Motherboard. Taht, who is one of the key signatories of the letter to the FCC, said that manufacturers often ship routers that are vulnerable to known exploits, putting consumers and the wider internet at risk as soon as the routers are turned on. Making the matter worse is how few consumers bother to upgrade their firmware if patches are released.
Source Article from https://www.freedomsphoenix.com/News/184893-2015-10-15-here-39-s-why-cybersecurity-experts-want-open-source-routers.htm?EdNo=001&From=RSS
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