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by batch12 747 days ago
It does matter since it lets an attacker be between your network and the internet. If that black box is a modem- yes it could be hacked, but (maybe luckily for me) the providers I've used don't expose many services from the modem on the public interface so it's much more difficult to compromise. You'd either have to come from the docsis network or the client network.
1 comments
vel0city 747 days ago
But remove the CPE router. Where do you think that fiber goes? To "the internet"? It's going to yet another box owned and managed by your ISP. And from there, probably yet another box owned and managed by your ISP. And then another black box maybe owned by yet another ISP, and then another black box owned by maybe yet another ISP. Each one of these could let an attacker come between your network and "the internet". You have no control over them. You don't patch them, you don't configure them, you have no say over the services running on them. If they're compromised, you likely wouldn't know.

The CPE just moves the first black box inside your home, but there's always some ISP black box you're connecting to. Even if you're a top tier network, it's not like you control every box between you and every other site you want to go to. You're going to eventually have some handoff at some peering location, and once again your traffic goes to a box you don't control just waiting for an attacker to manipulate and mess with your traffic.

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andrewstuart2 747 days ago
The CPE also moves the first black box under foreign control to (potentially) both sides of your firewall, as most small businesses likely just use the router in that mode, and have very little networking knowledge. That's significantly worse than somewhere on the outside of your firewall because now it can snoop pretty much everything and be used to scan the local network which is often poorly protected because it's assumed to be pretty secure.
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vel0city 747 days ago
Hence my first comment:

> doesn't make much difference if you have your own router between your network and the AT&T network

And in the end those businesses with no networking knowledge will end up using their ISP's CPE modem/router/WiFi combo regardless of if its required or not. And from my experience it is not even just AT&T requiring their CPE router somewhere in the stack. I previously managed a Spectrum DOCSIS business internet connection where they also required their owned and managed gateway in the stack in order to have any static IP addresses. They wouldn't support any other configurations.

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