There's a Nintendo Wii-U Sized Hole In My Firewall

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In order to allow your Nintendo Wii-U to participate in multiplayer online games, you have to configure your router/firewall/whatever in one of three ways per Nintendo:

  • Enable Universal Plug-n-Play (uPNP) on your router, which is widely known to be insecure.
  • Assign your Wii-U a static IP and use DMZ mode, which is opening your firewall to everyone on the Internet.
  • Assign your Wii-U a static IP and forward all UDP ports (1-65535) to your Wii-U. Note that mapping a couple of ports isnā€™t unusual, but when youā€™re mapping this many ports, is basically the same thing as DMZ mode, thus not any better.

None of these options are acceptable from a security point of view. Granted, I am reasonably security savvy and can mitigate the unnecessary risks involved with such a configuration. However, most consumers cannot and will not understand the risk they are undertaking.

While Iā€™m not exactly fond of a CyberUL, if there was such a thing, this kind of configuration would clearly be non-compliant.

Of course, neither Microsoft or Sony are much better, as they push the DMZ and uPNP as primary solutions first, but at least they offer solutions that donā€™t require forwarding all ports like Nintendo does.

Itā€™s the kind of thing Iā€™m surprised I havenā€™t heard other security professionals rant about, honestly. Itā€™s certainly going to make me think twice about buying any product from Nintendo in the future.

Edited to add on 10 Aug 2015: Links to why uPNP is bad as well as explanations on why the other options Nintendo offers arenā€™t much better.

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