nanog mailing list archives

Re: NSA able to compromise Cisco, Juniper, Huawei switches


From: Warren Bailey <wbailey () satelliteintelligencegroup com>
Date: Tue, 31 Dec 2013 23:04:00 +0000

Explaining, not a denial written by their legal department. I find it
insanely difficult to believe cisco systems has a backdoor into some of
their product lines with no knowledge or participation. Given the fact
that RSA had a check cut for their participation (sell outs..), would it
be out of the realm of possibility cisco knowingly placed this into their
product line? And would it be their mistake to come out with a “we had no
idea!” rather than “guys with badges and court orders made us do it!”?

Google has some deniability, as their networks were compromised without
their knowledge. Placing code into a PC BIOS or IOS image is a far
different beast than asking a fiber provider to give a split to a
governmental agency. Secret squirrel wires with secret squirrel modulation
techniques isn’t a surprise to me, what is a surprise to me is the level
of acceptance the IT community has shown thus far on NANOG.

On a side note, I found it unbelievable the NSA was so pissed off about
aeronautical access being hard to capture. The initial article made it
seem like they had already gotten ahold of the data, which would have
really pissed me off. If it’s really that difficult, I have a NSA proof
satellite platform with capacity should anyone need it.. ;)

//warren

On 12/31/13, 12:34 PM, "Dobbins, Roland" <rdobbins () arbor net> wrote:


On Jan 1, 2014, at 2:16 AM, Warren Bailey
<wbailey () satelliteintelligencegroup com> wrote:

Randy is right here.. Cisco has some Œsplainin to do - we buy these
devices as ³security appliances², not NSA rootkit gateways

<http://blogs.cisco.com/news/comment-on-der-spiegel-articles-about-nsa-tao
-organization/>

<http://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityResponse/cisc
o-sr-20131229-der-spiegel>

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Roland Dobbins <rdobbins () arbor net> // <http://www.arbornetworks.com>

        Luck is the residue of opportunity and design.

                     -- John Milton




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