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Can a simple switch be a security issue? (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by EasyImpress6392@alien.top to c/homenetworking@selfhosted.forum

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Hello there,

during black friday i've bought a tenda 2,5G switch on Amazon for a good price to replace my old 1Gbit one.

TEM2010F 8-Port 2.5G Ethernet Switch-Tenda-All For Better NetWorking (tendacn.com)

THe performance between my proxmox-nodes increased from 114 MB/s to 270MB/s.

But seeing that Tenda is a chinese manufacturer i've doubts about the security.
This switch is the central point in the network. And i dont want some malware or data sniffing device in such a central position.

I'm a newbie in this subject, so i'm, asking you experts.

How can a switch be a security issue?
This switch is unmanaged and has no IP. It isnt listed in my router (to block any internet access)

Can it send data without knowledge and how can a newbie like me check it?

Thanks

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[–] srdjanrosic@alien.top 2 points 11 months ago

Theoretically, a simple switch could be more complex than it appears, and therefore theoretically it could have security issues.

For example, my completely wild guess would be that there's probably an arm or a mips CPU and some ram inside that doesn't really do much... this is because smart switches would often use the same switch chip, for Ethernet, but with additional flash chip actually populated on the same PCB causing some software to run in the thing allowing you to configure the device and giving the forwarding logic additional behavior.

Practically its extremely highly unlikely, that someone could exploit a dumb switch to run arbitrary code, regardless of the brand label on it and country of origin.

Enjoy the new switch!