When the Snowden reports surfaced, one of the revelations was how the NSA had reportedly intercepted security equipment on the way to companies, installed backdoors in them, before sending them on their way. This allowed the NSA to hack and monitor companies and software that were otherwise secure.
Naturally not many people were too happy to have their equipment tampered with without their knowledge and now according to reports, Cisco’s customer have apparently been asking the company to ship their purchases to addresses that might otherwise be unrelated to them or their company.
This was confirmed by Cisco’s chief security and trust officer, John Stewart who was speaking during a panel session at the Cisco Live conference that was held in Melbourne. That being said Stewart notes that as much as they try, supply chains are essentially hard to control as once the products have been picked up by delivery companies, anything could happen in between.
Stewart adds, “If a truly dedicated team is coming after you, and they’re coming after you for a very long period of time, then the probability of them succeeding at least once does go up, and it’s because they’ve got patience, they’ve got capacity and more often than not, they’ve got capability.” Still, we guess we can’t really blame companies and individuals for trying anyway.