[yukIttEft]

In Germany we have "Störerhaftung" where routerowners are responsible for everything that happens through their router.

I wonder how this would hold up in court, couldn't you argue that routers are generally buggy, how can they force any responsibility if they can easily be hacked?

[nerdsniper]

Nearly every stock consumer router keeps getting these RCE’s. Perhaps that’s the point, they can get any arbitrary household in trouble if it’s expedient to do so.

[hylaride]

It would depend on the laws of the jurisdiction. I would imagine if you can show you kept the firmware up to date and had a secure as possible config (eg not having admin interfaces exposed to the internet), you could argue that there's no negligence - outside of maybe using a known insecure vendor; sometimes I think that would be a good idea (cough cough Fortinet).

Germany has some sensible laws about personal responsibility, like it being an offence to run out of gas on the autobahn and seriously treating driving in general as a privilege. But it requires a certain cultural mindset.

[cynicalsecurity]

It won't work. You would need to back up your claim with proof that someone hacked your router. You can't drive a car that is easily breakable and expect the court to clear you of any responsibility if it causes harm because it broke while you were driving.

[faidit]

An allegory here would be someone stealing an easily stealable car (e.g. doing the Kia Challenge) and causing damage or injury. The thief would be liable, not the owner

[SoftTalker]

Generally any damage done by a car is the responsibility of its owner. The owner will likely be sued anyway, because they have insurance and assets, and the thief (even if known) does not.

[faidit]

> The majority common law rule among the 50 states is that the owner of a stolen vehicle will not be held liable for damages when the vehicle is stolen and then involved in an accident that causes injury or property damage. This is because the vehicle was taken without the consent of the owner, who did not cause the accident.

https://www.mwl-law.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/OWNER-LIA...

[msh]

But if it’s the isp delivered router they should carry the responsibility

[wildzzz]

I would assume that liability is avoided when someone has done a reasonable effort to secure the device. The user needs to make sure they've secured their router from unauthorized access by using proper passwords. The ISP needs to make sure the router is delivered with the latest firmware and is pre-configured to be secure.

[ClumsyPilot]

I would not assume that.

Because British government has just made leaseholders of apartments liable for costs of fixing forged and fraudulently obtained fire safety certification of apartment blocks.

The manufacturers of cladding materials have forged the fire safety certificate, the construction company has not followed the law when it comes to fire breaks and other fire safety system, the government building control has examined the building and signed it off as correct, possibly corruptly.

But after a skyscraper burned down with all the residents inside, now the residents are liable.

[akadruid1]

This is ultimately a failing of democracy itself. This stuff was legal, and it's hard to make a law that reaches back decades to impose costs on manufacturers or real estate developers without drastic economic side effects. Leaseholders in theory were one of the beneficiaries of the cheap building techniques, but a lot (maybe most?) of the burden of remediation has actually fallen to the taxpayer - typical politicians, winning votes in the 1980s and paying the tax in the 2020s.

Known unsafe building methods should not have been legal, but we know that politicians have been avoiding legislating this specific issue for more 50 years[1]. Politicians need votes or kickbacks in months or a few years at most. Fire safety is a long term investment against a rare problem. Long term investments against even common problems are basically impossible in modern democracies. For example, if you legislate cycle path networks everywhere people will eventually love them and fight to keep them, in addition to delivering economic and health benefits, but outside the Netherlands very few places do it - because it took 40 years in the Netherlands.

[1]

[ClumsyPilot]

> This is ultimately a failing of democracy itself. This stuff was legal

Nah, it’s corruption the CEO of the company that forged fire safety documents was given legal immunity.

[SoftTalker]

The last few routers I've had from an ISP are totally turnkey. There's no configuration, no passwords set (maybe the local Wifi password), any config is done with an app that talks to the ISP, who then updates the router settings remotely. There isn't even an admin interface you can access from the local network side.