[167844] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: NSA able to compromise Cisco, Juniper, Huawei switches
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dobbins, Roland)
Mon Dec 30 21:05:25 2013
From: "Dobbins, Roland" <rdobbins@arbor.net>
To: "nanog@nanog.org list" <nanog@nanog.org>
Date: Tue, 31 Dec 2013 02:05:08 +0000
In-Reply-To: <CALFTrnMeLEbVNB+KPQWdgjonrERv04G+h4_Ypfz3QxF+uQXGiA@mail.gmail.com>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Dec 31, 2013, at 12:00 AM, Ray Soucy <rps@maine.edu> wrote:
> So this isn't an issue of the NSA working with Cisco and Juniper to inclu=
de back doors, it's an issue of the NSA modifying those releases after the =
fact though BIOS implants.
Yes, I see this now, thanks.
AFAICT, the Cisco boxes listed are ASAs and PIXes, which are essentially Li=
nux PCs running a bunch of userland firewall stuff and which have BIOSes an=
d so forth; they aren't routers/switches. I don't know much about Juniper =
gear, but it appears that the Juniper boxes listed are similar in nature, a=
lbeit running FreeBSD underneath (correction welcome). I know nothing at a=
ll about Huawei gear.
Compromising PCs with persistent malware/rootkits is pretty routine, so thi=
s isn't really surprising, IMHO.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Roland Dobbins <rdobbins@arbor.net> // <http://www.arbornetworks.com>
Luck is the residue of opportunity and design.
-- John Milton
