[geeks] Zyxel PLA4201 v2

[Arno Kletzander]

Hi Mr. Mouse,

Zyxel's Knowledge Base has a few articles about that product and one of them
(in the context of programming a firewall to allow the management application
traffic through) says:
"The communication between PC and power line device is using the HomePlug av
protocol, and it is defined as Ethernet 0x88E1." (
https://kb.zyxel.com/KB/searchArticle!viewDetail.action?articleOid=016583&lan
g=EN )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomePlug has some more information, including
that either DES or 128-bit AES encryption is used and that while devices sold
in pairs or more may already be programmed with an unique key per set, this is
not always the case (universal factory key) and users should change those.

And there is an open-source effort on github to achieve that:
"Faifa can configure any Intellon-based Power Line Communication device using
Intellon INT5000 and INT6000 series chips (6000 and 6300 chips). It supports
all Intellon-specific management and control frames as well as standard
management frames." ( https://github.com/ffainelli/faifa )

"NAME

       faifa - configure HomePlug 1.0/AV devices

SYNOPSIS

       faifa [OPTIONS]
       -i   specify network interface to use
       -m   show the menu asking for known MM types
       -a   destination MAC address to send frames to
       -k   network key to set
       -v   be verbose (default: no)
       -e   set error stream (default: stderr)
       -o   set output stream (default: stdout)
       -s   set input stream (default: stdin)
       -h   show the usage"

( http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/man8/faifa.8.html )

HTH, so long,

Arno // DO4NAK (P.S.: I should really mention that these things will annoy
HAMs and SWLs in a wide radius to no end!!)




> Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2020 17:56:10 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Mouse <mouse at Rodents-Montreal.ORG>
> To: geeks at sunhelp.org
> Subject: [geeks] Zyxel PLA4201 v2
> Message-ID: <202003182156.RAA27220 at Stone.Rodents-Montreal.ORG>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> I have - borrowed from a cow-orker - two Zyxel "PLA4201 v2" powerline
> Ethernet bridges.  I found Zyxel's user manual for it, which makes it
> clear it's got some intelligence onboard with some kind of control
> protocol (there's admin software which can do assorted things).
>
> I'm not fond of exposing my packets to anyone else too electrically
> close to me; since I'm in a highrise, that is probably a significant
> number of people.  Even if I were willing to run a vendor binary-only
> blob - which of course I'm not - their manual doesn't describe any
> admin software that would run on my machines; it's Windows and Mac and
> nothing else.  And the device has apparently been EOLed by Zyxel, so
> I'd be unlikely to be able to get even what little support they might
> have provided when it was live.
>
> It _might_ be safe to just use the encryption features it's got.  But
> I've heard of enough disasters in closed-source vendor software - and
> seen a few myself - that I don't trust it.
>
> So I thought I'd ping the accumulated knowledge of geeks at .  I don't
> suppose any of you happen to know anything about the firmware or
> control protocol or anything else useful?
>
> /~\ The ASCII				  Mouse
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