Texas Sues TP-Link: Because Apparently Selling Chinese Surveillance Hubs As “Routers” Is A Bad Thing Now
Oh, for fuck’s sake. The Texas Attorney General has finally discovered what every competent sysadmin has known since approximately the dawn of time: TP-Link devices are about as secure as a screen door on a submarine. And now they’re suing them. How precious.
Texas AG Ken Paxton’s lawsuit claims TP-Link—the fine purveyors of plastic networking turds that management buys because “they’re on sale”—has been lying through their teeth about security while their hardware essentially functions as a goddamn welcome mat for every script kiddie and state-sponsored hacker east of Beijing. The vulnerabilities aren’t just minor oversights; they’re gaping security holes that TP-Link has apparently known about for-fucking-ever and hasn’t bothered to patch because why would they? That costs money.
The complaint specifically mentions the Chinese hacking risk, which is government-speak for “these cheap bastards are probably phoning home to the People’s Liberation Army with your porn habits and banking details.” TP-Link, being owned by a Chinese company, is accused of violating Texas consumer protection laws by marketing their devices as “secure” when they’re about as trustworthy as a phishing email from a Nigerian prince.
Key allegations include: failure to patch known vulnerabilities (shocker), deceptive marketing bullshit, and general incompetence that would get any of us fired but apparently gets you a corner office in Shenzhen. The lawsuit wants them to stop selling their digital snake oil until they fix their shit, which means half the goddamn state of Texas might actually have functional Wi-Fi that doesn’t broadcast directly to hostile foreign powers.
I’ve been telling purchasing for YEARS that these $30 routers are a fucking security nightmare, but do they listen? No. They just see the price tag and start drooling like a Pavlovian dog at a bell factory. Meanwhile, I’m the one who has to explain to the CEO why his “secure home office” is currently being used as a bitcoin mining operation for some guy in Wuhan.
But hey, at least Texas is doing something. It’s only about five years too late, but who’s counting? The rest of us have already spent countless weekends firewalling these pieces of shit off from the main network while users complained about “slow internet.” Yeah, it’s slow because I had to throttle it to 56K speeds to stop it from broadcasting your fucking Social Security number to half of Asia.
Related anecdote: Had a user last month who insisted his TP-Link Archer was “just as good as the enterprise Cisco gear.” I spent three hours demonstrating how I could pop his network from the parking lot using a Raspberry Pi and a Pringles can. Then I “accidentally” redirected all his traffic to a Rickroll loop for 48 hours while I “investigated the issue.” He now has proper equipment and a newfound respect for my expertise. Or fear. Same thing, really.
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