The US claims foreign-made routers pose national security risks.
In December, the Federal Communications Commission banned all future drones made in foreign countries from being imported into the United States, unless or until their maker gets an exemption. Now, the FCC has done the exact same for consumer networking gear, citing “an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States and to the safety and security of U.S. persons.”
If you already have a Wi-Fi or wired router, you can keep on using it — and companies that have already gotten FCC radio authorization for a specific foreign-made product can continue to import that product.
But since the vast majority — if not all — consumer routers are manufactured outside the United States, the vast majority of future consumer routers are now banned. By adding all foreign-made consumer routers to its Covered List, the FCC is saying it will no longer authorize their radios, which de facto bans new devices from import into the country.
looks dubious
I mean, I don’t disagree that there are security risks posed by random consumer broadband routers. It is definitely the case that unmaintained — not intentionally shipped with malware — routers have been a real security problem in the past. My own view is that the current set of conventions, which often has very poor or no security on devices on the LAN and thus relies on the router to keep bad stuff out, is a very real part of that problem, but sure, having a secure router is part of that.
However.
I’d say that the majority of the threats that a router poses are also posed by any device on the LAN that can call out to the Internet. Like, you aren’t doing a lot to secure devices on the LAN if you ban routers and then I can still go buy random gadget from wherever that can get on the WiFi or wired Ethernet network and phone home, take instructions from home, and can talk to other devices on the LAN. I mean, are you also going to ban, say, smart televisions? Ethernet-connected security cameras? I mean, poorly-secured network-connected cameras have posed very real threats in places like Ukraine, where military intelligence has actively exploited them to get information about an area come conflict.
And I just don’t think that we’re going to commit to locking that down.
The idea is to stamp some that install doge palantir vibe coded back door to the propaganda control machine then they’re “made in the us” and then you just have to come up with a good excuse. But the excuse department is kind of busy, so wysiwyg
They did a first pass on banning security cameras many years ago. It was maybe the test bed, I can definitely see that one getting revisited. They only banned two major manufacturers that had kinda already been caught as a major security concern.
It’s why you don’t see hikvision or dahua anymore where they used to be major players.
The router ban was literally adding to the same list.