GoKawiilAlmost every wireless router used in US homes is now banned from sale within the country under a new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruling.
The FCC says that all routers made outside the US “pose unacceptable risks to the national
security of the United States or the safety and security of United States persons” …
At the end of last year, the FCC banned the importation and sale of foreign-made drones, citing national security concerns. It reclassified them from consumer devices to “tools for surveillance and intelligence collection, platforms capable of delivering payloads, and dual-use technologies with military and paramilitary potential.”
The agency yesterday used similar arguments to ban the importation and sale of all foreign-made internet routers.
The Executive Branch determination noted that foreign-produced routers (1) introduce “a supply chain vulnerability that could disrupt the U.S. economy, critical infrastructure, and national defense” and (2) pose “a severe cybersecurity risk that could be leveraged to immediately and severely disrupt U.S. critical infrastructure and directly harm U.S. persons.”
It follows a revelation last year that thousands of Asus routers had been compromised by a botnet with devices from Cisco, D-Link and Linksys also targeted.
A huge deal
This is a huge deal because almost every wireless router used in US homes was made outside the US. This includes the routers supplied as standard by internet service providers as well as models people have bought to get better features.
It means that ISPs will have to switch to US models, and most routers currently sold to consumers will have to be withdrawn from sale.
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