NSA able to compromise Cisco, Juniper, Huawei switches

[fw at deneb.enyo.de (Florian Weimer)]

* Warren Bailey:

> Explaining, not a denial written by their legal department. I find it
> insanely difficult to believe cisco systems has a backdoor into some of
> their product lines with no knowledge or participation.

As far as I understand it, these are firmware tweaks or implants
sitting on a privileged bus (think PCI with busmaster DMA).  Such
things can be added after the device has left the factory by a
sufficiently knowledgeable third party.