When it comes to internet connection, it will be easy for many of us here in 2022. Our ISP provides us with a fiber, cable or DSL line and we simply plug in and out. It has become ubiquitous that many customers no longer use analog phone lines which are often part of the package. But before easy access to DSL there was a leased line, and this is one of them [Old VCR] Dissecting. The line in question is that a T1 connection is good for 1.536 Mbit / s and has been installed at a high cost before providing reliable service to its cable provider, but now more than a decade later it is surplus. The ISP did not want to return their router, so what is there to do but hacking treatment?
In a long blog post, he takes us in with a T1 line key and details of how it was installed using two copper lines, before diving into the router. It’s an obsolete Samsung device, and as he tested the chips he didn’t find the MIPS or ARM processor that we would expect from the domestic gear of the time, but the PowerPC SOC from Friscale. Connecting to a serial port reveals it as running an SNOS, or Samsung network operating system, from an SD card, and some tests find a default password reset method via bootloader commands. The rest is dedicated to exploring this OS.
There was a time before the advent of Raspberry Pi and similar cheap Linux-enabled boards, hacking routers was a way to get a cheap embedded Linux system, but now much more has been done to free the router from the grip of the manufacturer and Telco is still, Part.