What they're not telling you: Tech Industry China tests deep-sea electro-hydrostatic actuator that can cut undersea cables at a depth of 3,500 meters Tech Industry Russian-made Shahed drones are ‘disintegrating in the air before reaching their targets’ due to shoddy manufacturing, video shows Tech Industry Iran reportedly bought an in-orbit Chinese satellite to target US assets in the Middle East Wi-Fi Routers TP-Link seeks to secure conditional approval from FCC following router import ban Wi-Fi Routers Netgear secures conditional approval from the FCC following router ban Tech Industry Russian ship loitering near transatlantic data cables chased off by Royal Navy attack helicopter Tech Industry UK navy tracked three Russian submarines near undersea cables, damage would 'have serious consequences,' Putin warned Tech Industry Dutch Secretary of Defense threatens to jailbreak nation's F-35 jet fighters Tech Industry Iranian missile blitz takes down AWS data centers in Bahrain and Dubai Networking Undersea cable cutting shenanigans lead Finland to create a dedicated maritime surveillance center Cybersecurity HWMonitor and CPU-Z developer CPUID breached by unknown attackers Tech Industry Iran threatens ‘complete and utter annihilation’ of OpenAI's $30B Stargate AI data center in Abu Dhabi Tech Industry US and Gulf states race for Ukrainian interceptor drones, including 3D printed model that costs $1,000 apiece Cybersecurity Russian GRU hackers are hijacking TP-Link and MikroTik routers to steal Outlook credentials, cybersecurity center warns Cybersecurity 10 petabytes of sensitive data stolen from China's National Supercomputing Center, hackers claim (Image credit: Getty) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Tom's Hardware Stay On the Cutting Edge: Get the Tom's Hardware Newsletter Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Iranian state media has alleged that equipment from Cisco, Juniper, Fortinet, and MikroTik failed during U.S.
# THE TAKE: Iran's Backdoor Complaint Rings Hollow Iran's crying foul about exploited networking vulnerabilities is rich theater from a regime that's spent two decades weaponizing the same infrastructure. Yes, US cyber operations likely leveraged known CVEs—that's basic tradecraft, documented in Stuxnet's aftermath. What's amusing: Tehran acts surprised that Cisco, Juniper, and Huawei equipment contain exploitable flaws. Their own network architecture relies on identical hardware. The real story isn't American opportunism; it's that Iran's critical infrastructure sits on equipment no serious adversary would touch without a kill chain prepared. The NSA didn't invent this playbook. They just executed it competently. Iran had decades to diversify suppliers and segment networks. Instead, they built command-and-control on the same vulnerable stack as everyone else. This isn't espionage. It's consequences.
What the Documents Show
and Israeli military operations against Iran. The report, which claims that “American ‘black boxes’ failed at zero hour of the attack on Isfahan,” concerns devices that Iran claims either rebooted or dropped offline despite the country having already been disconnected from the global Internet, a fact it says "indicates deep sabotage." Iranian media speculates that hidden firmware or backdoors allowed remote sabotage, possibly triggered by satellite or at a pre-set time. None of the claims has been independently verified, and given that the claims originate from state media, some skepticism is merited. hasn’t addressed Iran's specific allegations, but has publicly confirmed that it conducted cyber operations against Iran's communications infrastructure. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, said during a March 2nd Pentagon briefing that U.S.
Follow the Money
Cyber Command and U.S. Space Command were the “first movers” in so-called Operation Epic Fury, the military campaign launched against Iran at the end of February. Caine said coordinated space and cyber operations disrupted Iranian communications and sensor networks before strikes began. You may like US cybersecurity agency issues an urgent alert as Iranian hackers attack critical infrastructure Iran hacking group claims attack on med-tech company Stryker Iran's forced nationwide internet blackout becomes second-longest on record as it passes 1,000 hours offline Iran’s claims are unverified, but each of the four vendors it named — Cisco, Juniper, Fortinet, and MikroTik — has a documented record of security issues. NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden in 2014, for example, demonstrated the agency’s Tailored Access Operations unit intercepting Cisco routers during shipping and installing surveillance implants before repackaging them. Cisco never cooperated with the program and later began shipping equipment to decoy addresses to disrupt interception.
What Else We Know
Juniper Networks, in 2015, meanwhile, disclosed that it had found unauthorized code in the ScreenOS firmware running on its NetScreen firewalls, which could allow attackers to bypass authentication and decrypt VPN traffic. Fortinet acknowledged in 2016 that older versions of FortiOS contained hardcoded SSH passwords granting remote access, though it characterized the problem as a management authentication issue. As for MikroTik, its routers have been a persistent target for botnet operators , with Tenable documenting a vulnerability chain in 2019 that could enable an attacker to downgrade firmware and create a persistent backdoor. Chinese state media seized the opportunity to pile on Iran’s claims, with the country’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center, which has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. fabricated the Volt Typhoon hacking campaign to deflect from its own cyber operations, promoted the allegations as further evidence of American backdoors in networking hardware. Five Eyes intelligence agencies have attributed Volt Typhoon to Chinese state-sponsored actors targeting Western critical infrastructure.
Primary Sources
- Source: Hacker News
- Category: Tech & Privacy
- Cross-reference independently — don't take our word for it.
Disclosure: NewsAnarchist aggregates from public records, API feeds (Federal Register, CourtListener, MuckRock, Hacker News), and independent media. AI-assisted synthesis. Always verify primary sources linked above.