Iranian media is claiming that the US used backdoors and\/or botnets to disable networking equipment during the current war, and Chinese state media is dining out on the allegations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reports from Iran claim<\/a> hardware made by Cisco, Juniper, Fortinet, and MikroTik either rebooted or disconnected during recent attacks on Iran \u2013 despite the regime disconnecting the nation from the global internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The reports suggest that\u2019s only possible because someone \u2013 probably the US \u2013 can sabotage the equipment at will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The report linked to above hypothesizes that a hidden backdoor in firmware or bootloader allows remote attacks at a pre-determined time or can be activated by a signal from a satellite. In either scenario, the US uses the backdoor to bring down networks at the most inconvenient moment for Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The thrust of the Iranian stories we\u2019ve seen is that US-based vendors are complicit in the installation of backdoors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another scenario Iranian reports float is that someone has installed a botnet on networking equipment and has therefore been able to target devices from Cisco \u2013 and from MikroTik, the Latvian networking equipment vendor that emphasizes its product development takes place within the European Union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Iran\u2019s internet is currently mostly closed \u2013 more on that later \u2013 it\u2019s almost impossible to verify reports of a mass outage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That the USA possesses the ability to conduct attacks in cyberspace is not in doubt. After the US takeover of Venezuela, president Trump and general Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, alluded<\/a> to online action being one element of the operation. Caine also said<\/a> US Cyber Command assisted with the June 2025 \u201cOperation Midnight Hammer\u201d attack on Iran, without elaborating on the agency\u2019s role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whatever is going on, Chinese state media has seized on the Iranian reports to restate Beijing\u2019s position that China is a pacifist in cyberspace and the US is the real cyber-villain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n China\u2019s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC) regularly posts a theory<\/a> that information leaked by Edward Snowden shows the US embeds backdoors in networking equipment, and that all allegations that Beijing conducts cyberattacks is therefore just a sham to shift the blame to the Middle Kingdom. CVERC has even argued<\/a> that the Volt Typhoon attacks \u2013 which the Five Eyes nations agree was a Chinese attack on critical infrastructure \u2013 were a false flag operation run by US intelligence community to give it credibility when smearing China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chinese state media has given credence to the Iranian reports and even\u00a0published<\/a>\u00a0the cartoon below to express Beijing\u2019s feelings on the alleged events in Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n More & posted from: https:\/\/www.theregister.com\/2026\/04\/21\/iran_claims_us_used_backdoors\/?td=rt-3a<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Iranian media is claiming that the US used backdoors and\/or botnets to disable networking equipment during the current war, and Chinese state media is dining out on the allegations. Reports from Iran claim hardware made by Cisco, Juniper, Fortinet, and MikroTik either rebooted or disconnected during recent attacks on Iran \u2013 despite the regime disconnecting the nation… Read More »Iran claims US used backdoors to knock out networking equipment during war |The Register<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18557,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[384,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-computer-science","category-security"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/roglacup.com\/klaus62\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/roglacup.com\/klaus62\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/roglacup.com\/klaus62\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roglacup.com\/klaus62\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roglacup.com\/klaus62\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/roglacup.com\/klaus62\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18558,"href":"https:\/\/roglacup.com\/klaus62\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18556\/revisions\/18558"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roglacup.com\/klaus62\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/roglacup.com\/klaus62\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roglacup.com\/klaus62\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roglacup.com\/klaus62\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}