I have to say I’ve also been enjoying my synology - going on almost 7 years since this thing was released and I get security updates regularly still. Will buy again once this thing dies.
I'm a little bit torn on this one, we're talking 10-15 year old devices here. The number of companies that will continue to produce emergency security patches for their hardware so old and having reached EOL four years ago in 2020 are few and far between. Caveat Emptor most definitely, but if you're someone who likes to keep their tech running forever, you're going to need to get creative, when the manufacturer eventually stops patching. For this particular instance, I'd recommend placing the unit behind a vpn on the lan.
Yeah, I mean...what IS "end of life" / "end of support" other than not patching newly found issues, after long enough? Not enough info in the article to indicate any kind of bait and switch or annoyingly short support window, and the support window didn't end recently either. Seems pretty reasonable TBH.
Then again it's a lot of vulnerable devices, and doesn't sound like too hard of a fix. But for all I know they've dismantled their tooling for testing patches on those devices, etc. Would be nice if they addressed it, but I can't exactly condemn them for not.
It looks like they just didn't neutralize/sanitize controllable input data so it should be a pretty easy fix. I think if a security researcher gives you a layup by identifying an easily fixable vulnerability a company should just take it, even if the product is old. If for no other reason than it's bad marketing when news articles like this come out.
Lenovo did this when they bought Iomega NAS devices. The final firmware before they ended support added google ads to the web admin interface. So now I have it booting Debian and OpenMediaVault, bye bye Lenovo.
Oh, I have exactly one of these models. Discovered a longer time ago that when you enable ssh and look a bit around in config files, the root password is actual hardcoded and clearly written out. That's why I only have it available in a vlan without internet access since long time.
Just YSK, vlan is not a security measure. It enumerates Ethernet packages with a number different than zero, and you can see all vlans if the network card decides it.
So if some other device on your net is compromised, there is a chance traffic to your vulnerable box can be too.
( it gets a little more complicated with vlan aware switches in the middle. But not impossible)
Edit: BTW I feel you I too have a bit of older hardware thats on their own net where I just hope nothing bad happens til I come around to replacing it...
Banana Pi R3 or R64 (OpenWRT). Some DIY assembly required but it will probably last you over a decade.
My favorite part about these is that they are unbrickable. There is no bootloader to permanently corrupt as the firmware that loads the flash chip is in mask memory and the firmware you load from OpenWRT is the bootloader + firmware. So even if the flash chip dies you can use the other flash chip on the board or with soldering skills replace it and re-flash it.
The article didn't specify how old the affected models are, but any time you use an all-in-one device with proprietary software, you take the risk of this happening.
To some extent, you can't really blame the manufacturers for this, either. They can't reasonably continue maintaining software for their products for an indefinite period of time. As an extreme example, I wouldn't expect the old Linksys wifi router I used in 2004 to still be receiving firmware updates.
My NAS hardware is relatively ancient, but it's regular server hardware running TrueNAS. If TrueNAS suddenly stops getting updates, there's UnRaid, or just Linux. It really goes to show the advantage of using generic hardware with open software.
you can't really blame the manufacturers for this, either. They can't reasonably continue maintaining software for their products for an indefinite period of time.
Shh, anytime I say this about Windows I get people coming out of the woodwork that say Windows 7 should be supported 15 years later.
Don't you know that it's entirely unreasonable to expect your users to have hardware that's a standard feature on any machine made in the last ten years, that can be added to existing systems for around $30 and a free card slot? /s
I don't think I'll ever understand the insistence that a TPM module is a bridge too far.
You're right in saying that these devices are basically ancient, and also right about why you should never use all-in-ones for anything that you would want to last more than a couple of years.
For those kind of devices, the manufacturer should be required to make it possible to easily load a third-party firmware when they declare a device as obsolete.
I understand it's not financially viable to support a device beyond a certain threshold, but there's likely a community behind those that are willing to keep these devices alive for a while longer, with the benefit of reducing the amount of ewaste.
I'll allow it (my authority: some jerk that doesn't even have an account on this instance).
Part of Reddit culture was hyper narrow focus on the topics of subreddits. I wouldn't be surprised if the mods of r/samsung_galaxy removed "Overall I like my Pixel better" for being off-topic, even if it was a reply in the comment chain "I have both a Pixel 5 and an S22 and the S22 has the better camera." "Other than the camera which of the two phones do you like best?" 7 day ban, rule 4: mentions another brand of phone without also mentioning a Samsung.
That doesn't happen here on Lemmy as much and I don't mind it. While a NAS isn't necessarily directly a piece of gaming hardware, I think a lot of gamers might have one. Any who stream might save video of their play sessions to a NAS, etc. So I think this article is of peripheral interest to PC gamers.
Just looked it up and the DNS-320 Version 1.00 is from 2010. I get it on the company side thats old and was a given to be out of date. People who own it should take more mitigations to protect against any unwanted connections. Or use something that doesn't rely on proprietary firmwares like truenas or unraid.
I also have a NAS box that's out of support. Turned off all of the nifty services and firewalled the shit out of it so it won't be visible outside the LAN even by accident. Will replace it with a FreeBSD box as soon as I get a new hard drive.
Doesn't matter to the D-Link bean counters. Either case is a non-sale to them. Never mind that they tank whatever is left of their already terrible reputation, all they care about is immediate shareholder revenue generation, and spending money maintaining software for older hardware is a loss to them.