Sinister secret backdoor found in networking gear perfect for government espionage: The Chinese are – oh no, wait, it's Cisco again - Better ban this gear from non-US core networks, right?
Right on cue, Cisco on Wednesday patched a security vulnerability in some of its network switches that can be exploited by miscreants to commandeer the IT equipment and spy on people.
This comes immediately after panic this week over a hidden Telnet-based diagnostic interface was found in Huawei gateways. Although that vulnerability was real, irritating, and eventually removed at Vodafone's insistence, it was dubbed by some a hidden backdoor perfect for Chinese spies to exploit to snoop on Western targets.
Which, of course, comes as America continues to pressure the UK and other nations to outlaw the use of Huawei gear from 5G networks over fears Beijing would use backdoors baked into the hardware to snatch Uncle Sam's intelligence.
Well, if a non-internet-facing undocumented diagnostic Telnet daemon is reason enough to kick Huawei kit out of Western networks, surely this doozy from Cisco is enough to hoof American equipment out of British, European and other non-US infrastructure? Fair's fair, no?
It is really about time that network router companies were treated fairly. They have all had vulnerabilities and I'm never understanding why Cisco's repeated (I recall in 2018 they had 7 in a row in as many months) vulnerabilities are always played down whilst Huawei has a non-exposed Telnet "feature" blown completely out of proportion. It certainly does not appear to be a technology issue at stake here at all.
See www.theregister.co.uk/2019/05/…
#security #cisco #vulnerability
source https://squeet.me/display/962c3e10-755c-cb2e-1262-b7d070449873
This comes immediately after panic this week over a hidden Telnet-based diagnostic interface was found in Huawei gateways. Although that vulnerability was real, irritating, and eventually removed at Vodafone's insistence, it was dubbed by some a hidden backdoor perfect for Chinese spies to exploit to snoop on Western targets.
Which, of course, comes as America continues to pressure the UK and other nations to outlaw the use of Huawei gear from 5G networks over fears Beijing would use backdoors baked into the hardware to snatch Uncle Sam's intelligence.
Well, if a non-internet-facing undocumented diagnostic Telnet daemon is reason enough to kick Huawei kit out of Western networks, surely this doozy from Cisco is enough to hoof American equipment out of British, European and other non-US infrastructure? Fair's fair, no?
It is really about time that network router companies were treated fairly. They have all had vulnerabilities and I'm never understanding why Cisco's repeated (I recall in 2018 they had 7 in a row in as many months) vulnerabilities are always played down whilst Huawei has a non-exposed Telnet "feature" blown completely out of proportion. It certainly does not appear to be a technology issue at stake here at all.
See www.theregister.co.uk/2019/05/…
#security #cisco #vulnerability
source https://squeet.me/display/962c3e10-755c-cb2e-1262-b7d070449873
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