- The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) has bricked thousands of routers
- Flashing alternative firmware such as OpenWRT is an option that the ACCC has ignored
- Discarded SamKnows SK-WB8 routers can pose a security risk if not wiped first with a factory reset
The Australian government’s competition regulator, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC), has begun building around 4,000 routers rolled out across the country in 2020 to collect data on broadband speeds.
Issued as part of the Measuring Broadband Australia (MBA) program, the routers were white boxes from SamKnows, a subsidiary of Cisco, and were given a limited life. This date was reached in June 2026 with SamKnow’s SK-WB8 routers being remotely disabled on June 30th.
As a consequence, Australians are likely to throw away the bricked routers, resulting in a sharp increase in e-waste. Thereby, they risk a breach of digital security if the routers are not deleted first. Worse, the ACCC’s position is further muddled by the fact that these routers can be flashed, making their destruction rather pointless.
Data discarded, but the routers still work
Since the June 30 outage, the routers have been known to turn on, and while they are bricked for internet access, they can apparently be reused with custom router firmware. The nature of the data collected by the routers for the MBA program was for measurement and customer registration, and this has apparently been deleted, according to emails sent to volunteers in the program.
Although exact numbers are unknown, as of December 2020 over 2,600 of the SamKnows SK-WB8 routers had been distributed by the ACCC, with 4,000 scheduled for release over the lifetime of the MBA program.
Attempts to contact the ACCC and Cisco to learn more about why volunteers from the MBA program are being encouraged to dispose of perfectly serviceable routers have been met with generic, non-committal responses.
The ACCC gave ArsTechnica a comprehensive history of the device and the MBA program, as well as that “volunteers are encouraged to unplug their disabled whitebox and dispose of it in an environmentally responsible manner via free e-waste recycling services.”
Should you ditch your ACCC router?
If there is no reason to keep your ACCC-supplied router and have a replacement ready, it is important to reset the device to factory settings before disposal. This ensures that all administrator passwords, ISP information, and custom network settings are erased so they don’t fall into the wrong hands.
Finding a safe disposal option will help ensure that the router is properly disassembled. The ACCC has emailed recipients of SamKnow’s SK-WB8 routers informing them of the correct disposal procedure with a link to a live list of e-waste services.
However, if you have the time and desire to flash OpenWRT, a guide explaining how to do this is available on the OpenWRT page for SamKnow’s SK-WB8.
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