sykozis :
Did you even read the article? They had no record of a prior report before Dec 9, so it was not known to them back in August. It's been known to them since Dec 9 when CERT notified them.
Once it had been disclosed that the first notification occurred in August, we conducted a search and confirmed this was the case. Admittedly, this was an oversight on our part.
Yes, they knew about it in August. They disregarded it because their internal processes regarding being informed of such things failed to include or specifically excluded outside sources of such information. In other words: they don't consider communication with their customers as a priority.
This has to do with management style. It is "old school" to only consider internal sources of information for such things unless forced. This was the way management was taught until the last 10 years or so. I know this because I have fought with it for most of my career. Many companies are still stuck in this mentality, even in the tech industry. Cisco, Oracle, Creative Labs, VMWare, and EA are particularly bad about it. Companies like this head off in their own direction, regardless of what their customers want, and then suddenly realize they have become irrelevant.
More pioneering companies have begun to realize that this mentality is what causes big companies to fail to stay up in their markets. They began to take heed of what their customers had to say, and even began to solicit feedback from their customers. Microsoft started it with their constant focus groups, but have lagged behind lately, particularly during Steve Balmer's time as CEO. Bill Gates had the wisdom to work with people and find out what they wanted and how they worked to create an interface that people could use easily. (Thankfully, their new CEO has headed back in this direction.) Since then, others have started this, like Blizzard, which started a very active forum system to listen to their players' feedback.
Netgear has always been a rather isolationist company. They have very little in the way of active support, let alone user feedback. Ever try to get tech support for a bad router? It takes weeks to get a replacement. Do you think they even have any way to submit feedback on bugs? That is why they failed at this. They aren't paying attention, to their customers, the direction of the market, or the quality of their products, and they are going to pay for it in the end.
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