It doesn’t sound like the back door was put in for Walmart to use. So no, Walmart shouldn’t be slammed for this vulnerability anymore than for the vulnerabilities in the PCs they sell.
As far as I can tell, that's the company who imported and sold it. If Amazon and Walmart are liable, I won't need to worry about fake Sandisk memory cards, fake medicines, fake clothing, and other fake products there.
I'd love that.
Maybe I just had a really bad 6 months with Amazon, but it seems everything that comes is a fake or a scam.
I'd gladly pay 10% more for real products than 10% less for 50-50. Right now, I switched to mostly buying off-brands direct from China for a lot of products, since I get the same thing as Amazon, but at a lower price and with an honest label.
Or buying direct from manufacturers if I want something real.
I got screwed once doing even that, though. I ordered a brand-name headset. They did... fulfillment by Amazon. The headset is barely usable, so I'm assuming Amazon did commingled products. Or perhaps I got a defective copy. In either case, not worth fighting for 50 bucks.
Contact your state's AG, they usually have a consumer protection office that handles complaints like this.
Fake and flawed (a vulnerability) are not in the same category. The first is fraud, the second is just standard flaws in the product.
Walmart keeps on getting caught selling unethically produced goods. We need stronger laws to punish them when that happens. It doesn't seem to be enough to allow them to self govern.
Ditto for the likes of Amazon.
I can come up with examples of unethical production, I doubt I could come up with a solid definition of unethical which covers all definitions of an unethically produced good.
For now, it's easy enough to say "Goods produced by slave and child labor". From there, I think it is healthy to expand the law and regulations to capture missed or current unethical production practices. For example, production which produces a lot of CO2. Or production which pollutes the local environment. You could even go so far as saying "production where anyone in a company is making more than 10x anyone else".
Some may disagree with my examples of what are unethical. Which is fine. I think there are sections, though, that nobody should disagree with (and if you do, you're a monster).
Michael Hayden: "We Kill People Based on Metadata"
What is the industry-accepted, “will pass muster by a judge and jury”, level of due diligence that is considered minimally acceptable when purchasing Internet-connected devices from a supplier for resale to consumers?
The current answer as I understand is, simply, “no level of due diligence is expected with regards to network functionality, as the relevant UL/CE standards for ‘networking’ only concern themselves with RF interference at most”.
Should all computer resellers of any business size, whether Walmart nationwide or PC Hand-Me-Downs in a single city, be required to hire specialists to disassemble device firmwares for auditing purposes? Should this burden be placed on importers? Is this even legal under the DMCA?
Should the UL certification be found at fault here, since clearly they did not audit nor certify the device’s preinstalled firmware?
Yes, Walmart should be slammed for this. It's the Walmart's responsibility to protect its customers by sourcing secure electronics--especially when they're advertising the router as a Walmart exclusive. They're explicitly aligning themselves with the vendor.
But Walmart won't be slammed for this. Because the people who buy cheap routers from Walmart typically aren't the most tech savvy bunch.
You’re not realistically patching Windows without Microsoft’s cooperation.
Meanwhile, the router both A) Comes with an OS that you may or may not be able to patch, and B) You may or may not be able to replace it with something you can.
Consumers buying cheap shite is also a problem.