Customer Reviews

Linksys WRT54G Ultimate Hacking

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"For those who want to make the most out of their WRT54G you can learn how to port code and develop your own software for the OpenWRT operating system."

"Full coverage on embedded device development using the WRT54G and OpenWRT"

Unfortunately due to publication deadlines, much of the technical content of the book was dropped; it nolonger contains the chapters referenced in the above Amazon description, instead it focuses on giving brief reviews of the various firmwares available, along with hardware and software hacks. While it offers a good overview, the book falls short in technical depth and accuracy.

There are several places in the book where the information is either outdated or innacurate. Some examples -

OpenWrt should not be upgraded through the use of the "ipkg upgrade"; OpenWrt uses a filesystem overlay where the filesystem (squashfs) is readonly but appears writable by redirecting write access to another filesystem (jffs2). Attempting to upgrade will result in filesystem duplication; there are several warnings on the OpenWrt site regarding this.

The failsafe feaure is not new to OpenWrt's RC5 release; there has always been a failsafe proceeedure, but the instructions prior to the RC5 release were slightly different; failsafe was redesigned in RC5 to make it easier to access.

The example of blackholing advertisers through the use of dns using dnsmasq suggests rewriting the dnsmasq.conf; while the example does work, it creates a mess out of the configuration and involves many unnecessary steps. The same task could be acomplished much more easily by simply adding the hostnames to the /etc/hosts file.

The nvram-clean script does not actually reset the nvram configuration to defaults as described. The nvram-clean script only has a handful of known superfluous variables to remove; these are variables created by other firmwares that are nolonger required. It will not set any variables to their defaults; the defaults are device specific and setting them incorrectly would result in an unbootable device.

I think the most important contribution this book will make is to help people understand it is possible to change those innocuous Linksys boxes. After all, they are everywhere. I don't personally plan to try to hardware hack my Linksys router tonight after finishing reading the book, but it is on the list. Heavens knows, I have three or four sitting in the equipment closet from before we upgraded my home office to professional equipment. In the book we learn the parts of a Linksys router; to be truthful, I had never thought about that. There is a discussion about overcloking the router to make the processor run faster. Talk about a blast from the past, brings back the old 8086/8088 days. It was dangerous then and it still is today. There is a discussion about the OpenWrt team, without them, this would never be possible.

It was a real eyeopener to learn how much people have done with the WRT54G, there are a number of choices in firmware, even semi-commercial choices such as Talisman which allows you to establish VPNs, hotspots, mesh and even SIP VoIP. This book in extensively researched, we learn how to set up DHCP, SAMBA even X Windows! There are even several methods for increasing the radio output and or antenna modifications. U.S. readers are cautioned this can get you into trouble, I know I ended up sending my FM pirate radio system to a missionary group in Africa because it was just too tempting and in an urban area the FCC will eventually get you. The biggest surprise for me was the use of a WRT54G ( with an adapter ) as a bluetooth scanner.

My understanding is that the authors are going to offer a class, that sounds like a lot of fun. If you are going to be installing wireless it is a good idea to read this book, a lot of the information applies regardless of what brand of equipment you select. And as for me, I don't think I will ever look at a Linksys router in the same way ever again, from now on I will be wondering just exactly what is going on beneath the hood.

This book is full of fantastic information about modifying the WRT54G. I found it extremely useful and the projects have so far provided me with hours of hacking fun! However, the one beef I have with this book is it's written like Paul and Larry talk. Often times, they would tell you to do something one way, then contradict themselves later on in the chapter or go off on tangents, making the instruction somewhat hard to follow. Still, it's a great book for anyone interested in enhancing the capabilities of the WRT54G!

Please don't buy this. The information contained within can be found in about 30 minutes of Googling around...I've been working with WRT54s for a few weeks, browsed a copy of this (hint: Google pdf) and found it be of zero value to me.

Unfortunately I don't have a better recommendation as an alternative...you're swimming in murky waters if you start hacking access points, but unless your needs are quite basic, this book isn't going to help. If your needs are pretty basic, the documentation on the OpenWrt and the dd-wrt sites will probably tell you all you need to know.

One strong suggestion: the hardware in these boxes changes frequently...if you're buying a device to play with, be very careful about the specific hardware version of what you get. Example: Asus' WL-500gp is a great box to use, but hardware version 2 of that box uses a different wireless chip that is currently unsupported (as of 12/2008).

This is a great book for anyone interested in knowing all about the WRT54G series routers and how to hack them. The authors Paul and Larry from the popular "PaulDotCom Security Weekly" podcast did a great job explaining the inner workings of the router and also have some great tips on how to hack the firmware and hardware.

I would have given this book a 5 star rating but it unfortunately covers too much info about using the OpenWRT "White Russian" firmware instead of the new NVRAM replacement firmware called OpenWRT "Kamikaze". In their defense though I acknowledge that at the time of print the OpenWRT "Kamikaze" stable version was finally released. But anyone needing to know all about the previous OpenWRT "White Russian" or the other optional firmware upgrades will definitely not be disappointed!

I highly recommend buying this book anyway and also recommend their related website "[...]" for more valuable info about these awesome little routers!

Wow I got my book in a week ago and read the entire thing in three nights. It was everything I was expecting! I am now on the hunt for some moderate priced WRT54G's.
Presently I have a WRT54G ver.3 running dd-wrt and after reading this book plan on moving to Openwrt. This really is a must have for anybody that enjoys pushing your equipment to the limit or just tinkering...Yes you can find a lot of this information on your own on the net, But Larry and Paul have done a great job bringing it all together and giving you a lot thought points along the way and made a nice point to make the code sections availble for download saving from time consuming typing mistakes.
My favorite sections are building a pen-testing WRT54g and the hardware hacking section.
All ready adding a 2gig sd card to mine and dual serial ports. And there website for the book [...] is steadily being updated with new and information constantly. Just recently added diseccting the WRT54g ver.8. Thanks guys and Great job. <Dmnhunter>

This book is a great guide hacking your WRT54G. It covers a wide variety of topics and gives some good detail into each one without focusing on one topic more than it should.

I enjoyed the book quite a bit and wish it had been released a few months earlier for a project I was working on. I was happy to see clear examples and pictures on building JTAG cables, GPIO points, and other pieces of hardware. These were some things that took me a bit longer to research on my own and what I found required me to make several leaps of faith. The fun part of hacking hardware is that you have something to hold when you are done. The frustrating part is when you make a mistake and have to go buy more parts. (Anyone want a fried WRTSL54GS for cheap?) I appreciated the work Larry and Paul put into making this less of an issue.

I'd love to see information on writing software for these devices in the future. The book is good at showing you how to take what is out there and apply it to what you have. However, I'm starting to dig into developing applications for this platform and piecing things together off of the web can be a bit tedious.