Iran accused the United States of disabling Cisco and other manufacturers' routers through hidden backdoors.

Iran reports that the United States used backdoors and botnets to disable part of network equipment during cyberattacks

In an official statement, Iranian government officials announced that during recent cyber attacks on the country, American forces employed hidden mechanisms (backdoors) and botnet networks. According to them, this allowed disabling or forcing rebooting of equipment from leading manufacturers—Cisco, Juniper, Fortinet, and MikroTik—even when Iran was already isolated from the global internet.

How the sabotage occurred

Iranian media claim that malicious components were embedded in device firmware or bootloaders, which could be activated remotely or via a satellite signal. According to Iranian authorities, such backdoors may have been supplied by American equipment vendors. An alternative scenario is that the equipment was part of a botnet simultaneously attacking Cisco and MikroTik devices.

Confirmation from third‑party sources

Chinese authorities confirmed this version, and Chinese media repeated the thesis that under orders from U.S. officials, backdoors are being inserted into network equipment—a notion previously voiced by Edward Snowden. In the United States there was no direct denial; however, government sources indirectly confirmed the possibility of such actions by mentioning parallel cyber attacks in Venezuela and Iran during military operations.

Current situation

Since February 1, Iran has been isolated from the global internet segment for 52 days. Access to this segment is granted to citizens on an individual request basis, and “white SIM cards” with unlimited access are issued to certain officials.

Thus, Iran claims that the United States used hidden mechanisms and botnets to sabotage network equipment during cyberattacks, corroborated by Chinese authorities and indirect statements from U.S. officials.