Linksys WMP54GS

[lotacus]

This software is used to connect linksys wireless adapters to a wireless router. It can be found on the driver disk that came with the adapter, and it can also be downloaded from the linksys website.

I have used it many times, and noticed that my firewall reports that it is trying to make outbound connections other than the tasks it's meant to perform, that is, connecting to the router. It was reported as connecting to several websites located in japan and taiwan, some sites being google, yahoo, and www.gemtek.com.tw.

I have mentioned this to linksys and included firewall logs to prove that it was making unauthorized outbound connections, without the explicit concent of the enduser.

This is very serious. I don't know if there is an organisation that looks after this, but just like sony's rootkit (which i know is a little more extreme than this case), it hides it's secondary agenda's from the people that use this software. Is this not illegal?

[pogue]

You might want to use a sniffer tool like Ethereal (http://www.ethereal.com/) to visually see the traffic going out to that site and exactly where it's coming from and what it's sending. That might better determine why it's calling home and what kind of data it's sending out.