Router Hacking Challenge | GNUCITIZEN Just having a quick glance over that page has shattered any confidence i had left in embedded devices (more specifically home routers). Alot of the methods described can be done remotely (with scripts embedded into html pages on compromised servers / malicious sites etc) and would allow an attack to change DNS settings (to a DNS server they control). If you control someones DNS results, then you control the content that there browser loads! (for example, send them the IP of another machine you control with a clone of there banks website hosted on it when they request what-ever-there-bank-is.com).
What about power usage compared to embedded devices? Haven't read through all of that, how does changing the DNS settings work if you're not logged in to the router?
Here's a good example You can build very low power x86 computers, THIS mobo for example only draws 14W (and with a second network card or ADSL modem, some ram and a small SSD you have a low power router) You can install Linux (openWRT etc) on quite a few home routers... I have openWRT running on a WRT54G (v2.2) acting as a wireless client with NAT to share the connection to the machines on the wired side (the other benefit of not using the default firmware, you cant do this with the default WRT54G firmware)
