Unbranding a Fritz!Box 6490 KDG Edition

What was going on?

Recently, I had once again the unique opportunity to flash a “Fritz!Box 6490 KDG Edition” with the guarantee of no consequences in case I completely brick it. This time, because I needed the DECT functionality still working after this operation, I chose to stay on the proprietary firmware by AVM. 🤷‍♂️

So, here is my battle plan:

1. Get the stock firmware for the device from its vendors download-server with its recovery-tool in case it goes really wrong.
2. Convince the bootloader to report an unbranded model to the OS (guide from here)
3. “Recover” and boot it
4. Enjoy a more open experience!

What really happened…

Obtaining the stock image

This is where I hit the first road-block: The manufacturer offers seemingly no recovery.exe-tool for this device. So, to proceed, I just grabbed the original firmware image from their download server and extracted the partition images from it:

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OpenWrt for Fritz!Box 7360 EWE Edition

What was going on?

Recently, I had the unique opportunity to open-source flash a “Fritz!Box 7360 EWE Edition” with the guarantee of no consequences in case I completely brick it! So my first choice fell on OpenWrt, as it is a well-known and well-documented open-source firmware for routers and modems. Especially, this would fix issues with increasingly decreasing wireless performance with the original firmware after multiple weeks of uptime (thanks AVM).

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