How to SSH on LINKSYS ROUTER with USB Port

Recently had issues of Hanging on the LinkSys EA3500 router.. going to the router and doing power reset was not a option which I fancied. LinkSys Insist that using the smart wifi firmware and using the app on the iPhone, I would reset the router.. but when the router is hanged ie it was no longer routing to the WAN, there is no way the app worked.

I either had to buy a new router and gift this EA3500 to a good friend or find a work around to access the router through Telnet or SSH but…

1. This Router cannot be Modified using dd-wrt or any other third party software due to Marvell 88F6W01 instead of Broadcom chipset.

2.  Googled for a solution; found Hacking Linksys E4200v2 firmware looked good but had too much of info for me to digest.. but also in mention was blog by Dan Walters

3.  Dan had found a security hole, — “packages” directory off the root on the USB Drive and The contents of this directory are automatically linked to /opt, and anything in the /opt/etc/registration.d directory is executed, init script style, to extend the functionality of the stock firmware —

4.  Because Dan has provided the “Dropbear Binaries And Corresponding Init Script“, I unzipped the archive to a spare usb stick.. “packages” folder on the USB stick. and inserted this stick in the router..

5.  WOW “SSH” access was available > ssh root@ipaddr password: same password of admin.

Once SSH Access was enabled, I just wrote a python Script to SSH and reboot the Router whenever the www.google.com was not reachable. detailed the Script in the next post

7 Comments

  1. alex18th January 2014

    Does this work on the latest firmware (smart wifi) ?

    Reply
  2. harshal10th February 2014

    Hey can you upload the dropbear binary and ssh init script again the link you indicated in the blog post doesn’t work now. Thanks for the post.

    Reply
    1. admin14th February 2014

      edited the post with a link to packages

      Reply
      1. harshal10th March 2014

        Thanks a ton appreciate your help.

        Reply
  3. Dhaval17th April 2014

    Hey Bro, can you kindly upload the files to somewhere in the cloud? The link you have put is not working now 🙁
    A dropbox upload would be ideal,
    Thanks!

    Reply
  4. Tom26th May 2014

    Hi,

    Do you have a new link for the init script and Dropbear? The link has stopped working.

    Thanks,

    Tom

    Reply
  5. J13th January 2022

    Hi, can you upload the dropbear and init scripts files? Links are down! How should USB structure be to launch dropbear? Thanks in advance.

    Reply

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