Cisco Systems—Cisco began shipping hardware to alternate addresses to prevent NSA interception and implant of surveillance tools
After Edward Snowden's 2013 revelations that the NSA had been intercepting Cisco networking equipment in transit to implant surveillance backdoors, Cisco took countermeasures by shipping products to seemingly random addresses to throw off interception efforts. CEO John Chambers also wrote to President Obama protesting the NSA's practices. Cisco published a formal human rights position opposing backdoors and stating it does not deliberately build backdoors into its products.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Encryption & Privacy | +toward | secondary | +0.50 |
| Surveillance Technology | -against | secondary | +0.50 |
| User Privacy | +toward | primary | +1.00 |
| Overall incident score = | +0.286 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (medium ×1) × confidence (0.57)× agency (reactive ×0.75)
Evidence (1 signal)
Cisco shipped hardware to decoy addresses to prevent NSA interception of networking equipment
Reports in 2015 confirmed that Cisco began shipping equipment to seemingly random addresses to prevent the NSA from intercepting and implanting surveillance tools in its networking hardware. This was a direct response to Snowden revelations showing NSA had modified Cisco equipment in transit.