As a US citizen, I would love for there to be a reasonably-priced US-made alternative. I guess Netgear could be one[0], but their Insight management system is cloud-only, isn't it? Happy to be corrected.

I think I'd rather take an ostensibly-offline controller from China than a cloud-enabled one from the US, though I'm not really happy with those options. :-(

Are there some good options I missed? Would like to hear about them, if there are any.

[0] I expect their hardware is made in China, even if their controller may not be.

Seems like an opportunity for router software with great UI and management on linux or pi to excel. then run it on anything.

What data would they even want? My WiFi password? My PPPoE password? All my https packets?

Do you work from home? Does your company have any valuable intellectual property?

What's the specific mechanism of data capture you would be worried about?

What you did here was vandalism. Please don't make rage edits on HN.

Please do review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when commenting, regardless of how wrong other commenters are or you feel they are.

It's a sad commentary on how low the bar has been lowered. "No, you're system isn't secure, but the people that can access it can't really do you bodily harm" is not really the level I would hope we are trying to acheive.

This isn't useful input on where the actual bar is since these are all just conspiracy theories. Who is doing any of this?

I'm not sure what you're calling conspiracy theories since it looks like the GP edited his content, but if you think China is not exfiltrating data from hardware, let me know. I'll provide you with copious references from the recent past. Sure, the US is doing it, too.

I certainly think they do for businesses, but worrying about state actors attacking your home network is kind of pretentious until they actually do it. Are you that special?

The comment was something about how if you get the FBI mad they'll fabricate a drug case against you which somehow involves hacking into your home router or possibly subpoenaing your ISP.

If the favorite color of hat for you happens to be black, then sure, why wouldn't the state actors being looking for you? If you've done some stuff that involved using credit cards that didn't belong to you or any other of a myriad of things on the FBI's list of things you should not do, then they will be looking for you.

Please do provide the references.

Here are just a few. There are more if you dig deeper:

https://cybernews.com/security/walmart-exclusive-routers-oth...

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/easte...

https://www.zdnet.com/article/multiple-backdoors-and-vulnera...

Even Cisco was doing it: https://www.zdnet.com/article/cisco-removed-its-seventh-back...

And the NSA was known to be intercepting router shipments to international customers, injecting their backdoors, then re-shipping the modified hardware:

https://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/snowden--the-nsa-p... (this is documented all of the place; infoworld may not be the best source but it is just one)

For every example that is exposed, it is safe to assume there are others that have not been found.

I'm not sure where your router connects upstream, but they don't have to swim very far to find somewhere to feed.

Kinda like spreading the risks