DATAPUISTOKEMISTI

Huawei B315s-22 contains Huawei HiSilicon 6361 SoC, Realteak Ethernet switch and Broadcom WLAN. Not much to see, but some photos here .

This is updated version of my original post. I purchased additional modem that's externally identical to old one but had different serial port USB ID (USB\VID_12D1&PID_1442&MI_00) missing from earlier driver pack causing original instructions to fail. I have also included latest Stick-mode firmware 21.200.07.00.805 I've found and corrected some incorrect information on original post. Modern Huawei USB LTE modems can be used in two very different modes. Default is HiLink mode where it functions as router doing NAT and other nastiness much like more traditional 4G routers connected over WLAN or Ethernet. Unsurprisingly default mode is HiLink, but luckily it can be changed to Stick mode getting rid at least one layer of NAT and related issues. Actually there's also third mode which is subset of Stick, instead of native NCM interface it uses legacy PPP over emulated serial port. This can be sometimes useful with older routers with USB port but you won't be able ...

Trying to upgrade Huawei E367u-2 from old 11.810.09.00.00 to latest available 11.838.01.00.1131 ends up with error code 16. This one was easy to fix - flash first  11.810.09.33.00 and then to latest.

My B593s had ancient Sonera branded firmware that has DNS issues when IPv6 is active. At least IPv6 reverse queries stall causing long delays. There's some rumors going that Sonera provides updated firmware over-the-air, but I couldn't trigger update despite trying hard. Might be because I was using Elisa SIM card. Since Elisa does have fairly recent firmware available for download I thought why not use Elisa firmware instead - get IPv6 bug fixed, have correct operator settings as default and also future updates should work without extra hacks.

450MHz LTE is alive!

Nothing special here in my opionion, but I've seen few comments saying that FMK  doesn't work with Huawei B593u. Just follow instructions below and you end up with normal firmware image having one important difference - you can telnet in as admin from LAN side of device.

Public Huawei document I linked couple days ago mentioned factory diagnostics tool called  " Huawei deviceLocker V0.1" that will grant access to root shell on router. I got curious on how this would actually work and came to conclusion it must be something extremely simple and insecure, it IS Huawei after all. Did some poking around /bin/web process I figured this out - it's all there in clear-text for anyone to read. And that admin password is in Huawei docs, not exactly secret either. In case you didn't realize there's no need for authentication to exploit this. Protip: Try to hide you backdoors a bit better next time.

Perhaps you're fairly satisfied with Huawei stock firmware but would like to fix some security problems and remove spyware installed by factory. There's fairly easy way to do this.

Sorry, one more B593u post but felt this is worth documenting. While hacking my way into Huawei B593u I had big problem with Huawei crippled CFE bootloader. It was not talking to me and when I finally did get it to talk to me it was only one way. All I could see was CFE> prompt after smashing ^C but nothing else.

I got few B593u models and it's pretty straight forward Broadcom BCM5358 based router with Linux. As usual GPL sources were never published by Huawei crooks. LTE modem side is simply Qualcomm MDM9200 based Huawei USB dongle connected internally to Broadcom SoC over USB.

Found this document on Huawei webpage you might be interested. It's in Microsoft Word .docx format. http://www.huawei.com/ecommunity/3msimage/download-10060827-10000297-9bca6ae8ffa54796a5245e6650b0e607.bin?type=bbs

Here's location of Huawei B593u TTL serial console. Settings are usual 115200 8N1.

There ain't many pictures showing innards of B593u around and even less ones with any details. This obviously needs to be fixed.

I think ethernet switch and wireless aren't supported by opensource drivers so even with OpenWrt booting on Huawei B593u-12 it's not much use. USB connected LTE module is not detected, my guess is that some GPIO needs to be toggled to enable it. PCA9555 GPIO expander would need some work too. Also 256MB NAND-flash is missing, only 16MB SPI flash is found.

CFE> boot -elf -tftp 192.168.1.100:openwrt-brcm47xx-mips74k-vmlinux.elf

Huawei B593 has "few" security issues. If you want to play around here's some tips.