We use both, OpenWRT on cheap TPLink consumer routers as a VPN router in home and branch offices, and a bunch of virtualized pfsense firewalls for network security in our hq and datacenter rack.
If you're after real routers as in routing protocols like bgp and ospf and not security devices, both are not of much use. this is where vyatta, a open source Debian based router distribution is better suited.
Wireless performance of openwrt depends on the hardware it is running on, but It's generally not great compared to proprietary gear from ubiquity and mikrotik. Both make dirt cheap wireless gear and routers that can match and outperform Cisco routers that cost 10x more. Wireless ISPs everywhere rely on those vendors.
> If you're after real routers as in routing protocols like bgp and ospf
> and not security devices, both are not of much use. this is where vyatta,
> a open source Debian based router distribution is better suited.
[1]: http://bsdrp.net
[2]: http://zrouter.orgThat said, when you bring their strange "packages" into the mix, all hell can break loose. So be careful.
[1] http://store.netgate.com/Ubiquiti-EdgeMAX-EdgeRouter-Lite-P1...
[2] http://store.netgate.com/ALIX2D2-Kit-Black-Unassembled-P187C...
As for how this relates to the exploit discussed here, your only using it as an AP, you'll very rarely need to login after the first setup since it really isn't doing much, just Wifi <-> Ethernet bridging. If using a consumer router the WAN port isn't connected to anything, no outside access to worry about (unless you did some funky forwarding on the pfsense box). You should also disable management via Wifi. That limits any access to a wired connection to the network, meaning someone is already in your apartment to physically patch in with an ethernet cable. Any security bets are off at that point. If you want super extra special security you can setup firewall rules on the pfsense box that only make the AP's IP address accessible from a particular port.
As dumb as this exploit is on the part of netgear, remember that to exploit it the attacker had to have already broken the WPA2 security to access the wifi or physically plugged in with ethernet. The first vector can be avoided by simply turning off management via wifi.
Or accessed your router internally via JavaScript, img tag, or iframe hidden on a malicious or compromised page. XSRF is real.
Edit: granted, browsers limit what JavaScript can do across sites, but request-only access is enough to change DNS settings to something malicious, and if the attacker can inject unescaped content into the page in some way, then they can run JavaScript on the router page and send data back that way.
Edit2: I'm not certain, but I think the timing of image load events could be used to determine success/failure of router actions loaded through a hidden img tag.
E.g. TP-Link's WR841N for 20 dollars:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001FWYGJS http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr841nd
Edit: oh hello downvote, I'm glad you think AC is worthless to note.
I'm using an old mini-ITX IPC board from Jetway with one of the first dual core Atom cpus, 1GB of ram (overkill) and 4 x Gbit ethernet ports. With a slim case / power supply I think it was ~$250 about 5 years ago when I bought it.
Other than moving apartments it's only ever been rebooted once, to upgrade from pfsense 1.2 to 2.0. It's never crashed and never caused a problem, and I beat on my network connection. OpenVPN performance from outside is only limited by my WAN speed. It's been awesome.
I also use pfsense in a VM in front of a bunch of other VM's on a VMWare server and it works great for that as well.
I've used an old eMachines PC with a couple of network cards and a switch in the past. An order of magnitude better than the Linksys router from my ISP it replaced. Also never had to reboot until I moved.
Never tried it as a VM front before. Good to know it's another option.