The Belkin posting reproduced on Slashdot indicates that when you
unsubscribe via their Web page, it modifies the configuration of your
router. Say, what? There are ways in which an external Web server can
change things on my box? How is that secured? I can think of lots of
bad answers to that question, and not very many good ones.
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb
May be they simply flag your router to not redirect to any web site, but the
router still goes every x hours to their site to verify the current redirect
status of your product. This wouldn't require admin privileges on your box
to be done... but could make every router with such firmware DoS'able; just
blackhole the Belkin site and every such request would need to timeout
before the router resumes normal behaviour.
Rubens