SecurityScorecard’s STRIKE team has worked with ASUS to unveil a massive malware campaign against end-of-life ASUS WRT routers.
Last May: Thousands of Asus routers are being hit with stealthy, persistent backdoors
Probably should not be using a router from this vendor 
Yeah, although I can’t think of any consumer-grade routers that really offer any meaningful security features. I think I’d rather use my Mac as my home router at this point haha.
Indeed, that’s the problem lol
At first, I was a bit scared by the news, but the more I looked into it, it seemed all the devices were End-of-Life models. You should install MerlinWRT on them right away when they are new and keep it updated. You can also give me a tip if you know a router with a 10G SFP+ port. Unfortunately, mine doesn’t support MerlinWRT, so an upgrade is needed sometime. However, you can get new versions from the SNB forum before they are publicly released.
So, install MerlinWRT on all Asus routers immediately!
edit. The user interface and settings when you update also stays practically the same, and the automatic update to the new MerlinWRT works too!
TIL about MerlinWRT. Looks like a great option at first glance.
That’s right, and Asus itself also works with them. So they get the new firmware from them, and then they make their own changes to it. And they have been doing this for as long as I can remember.
People could buy two Banana Pi for the same price of an Asus router, slap OpenWRT on it and sleep peacefully without having daily issues due to Asus slopiness otherwise.
Requires more knowledge for sure, and everybody made the mistake of buying an Asus router in their life haha. 
Well, MerlinWRT appears to be really for folks who already have one and to save money instead of replacing it with another potentially terrible option.
I’d honestly toss something expensive and faulty to buy something sturdy and trustworthy but I do agree that it’s a nice and quick fallback for the people without a choice. 
I guess you can connect that to the switch with a 10G SFP+ and it will have enough power to run QoS well?
Dear sir, I have no clue at all.
Sorry couldn’t help further. 
Planning to buy one very soon myself to upgrade to some 10Gb in my home but not there yet.
Honestly, I doubt it would run worse than an Asus router if you ask me.
At least, the one I had back in the day wasn’t THAT exceptional for its price.
Not even the RT-AX89X can handle running 1GB QoS without the speeds dropping. A switch can handle it, but that costs over 700€.
That’s what I’m saying, for the price those boxes aren’t that crazy.
But honestly, if you want to pull out 300/400€ into such hardware, there is probably one out there that could do the job just right for you.
Maybe even buying 2nd hand pro gear for a slashed price (and being sure that you can run FOSS firmware on it). 
With a 1GB connection, you don’t usually need QoS for normal use, but it is important for music-related things when DSD512 requires a steady 50mb/s.
Damn, HIGH bitrate quality music you got there. I understand more the need for some QoS.
This is exhausting 
.
Anybody has a list of vulnerable models?
Just instal MerlinWRT.
You’d be much better off with OpenWrt, which has many more maintainers and keeps its dependencies much more up to date and has stricter inclusion polices regarding blobs and doesn’t include junk from the upstream like:
and the Asus exclusive features such as AiCloud or the Trend Micro-powered AiProtection
Yes, OpenWRT is on the to-do, but at the very end 