this almost 100% means someone was gathering inteligence.
counterfeit or otherwise messed with hardware wont just pop up on military operations.
nortel 2.0.
That’s capitalism with a military contractor increasing their profits.
Or it’s a surveillance attempt by someone.
I read this as “counterfeit Costco gear” and the only think I can think is that they’ll at least have plenty of giant bags of chips
At one point I had Cisco and Costco in my stock portfolio and that was pretty confusing lol
That’s… Bad. Like really bad.
Why is this allowed by the DoD?
Because the DoD isn’t as organized as many perceive. Source: me
How are you your own source? Doesn’t make sense.
I’m a network engineer in the DoD lol
The DoD will soon be requiring itself and Contractors to start following Rev 5 of the NIST SP 800-53 Risk Management Framework. In this revision are more robust controls for Supply-side security, which the DoD has been trying to incorporate for over 10 years.
Americans should know that the military and DOD and it’s contractors do their best to purchase authentic hardware from reputable vendors, but there are exceptions and alternate procurement allowances if the need is great and the standard more secure lines are unavailable or simply on back order.
It’s usually then that some of the fake hardware makes it into use
I wonder why they can’t just buy straight from Cisco, surely they are big enough and the equipment is sensitive enough for that to make sense.
This sounds like a lot of things were going wrong. Okay, first you had the guy committing fraud.
But why is the military sourcing its network hardware from random small resellers off Amazon? Like, even if the hardware were authentic, that seems like a route for potential trouble.
And it sounds like questionable stuff is getting into Cisco’s official supply chains, too:
That same year, Al Palladin, Cisco’s legal director of global brand protection, told CRN that even authentic Cisco channel partners were acquiring products outside of Cisco-authorized means because it was faster.
Probably a fairly sophisticated espionage operation.
Al Palladin
I’ve bought Cisco equipment from verified vendor partners before, put in legit Cisco SFPs, route bricked itself and when I opened the TAC case they said it was mimic device and sent me a new one to arrive within 4 hours since it had been ordered from an approved partner. This shit happens somehow
These fake cisco devices might be less vulnerable than the real devices.
Love the sentiment but they were flashing old devices so the likely had lots of vulnerabilities.
$$$$$ “The 2022 audit, released in November, marked the fifth year the Pentagon had failed its audit (the process started in 2017).”
Jon Stewart blasts ‘corruption’ in Pentagon spending
“Now, I may not understand exactly the ins and outs, and the incredible magic of an audit. But I’m a human being who lives on the Earth and can’t figure out how $850 billion to a department means that the rank and file still have to be on food stamps,” Stewart said. “To me, that’s fucking corruption. And I’m sorry. And, if like, that blows your mind and you think that’s like a crazy agenda for me to have, I really think that that’s institutional thinking, and that it’s not looking at the day-to-day reality of the people that you call the greatest fighting force in the world.”>
