TP-Link routers could be banned in the US over national security concerns

[midian182]

In brief: TP-Link routers, one of the most popular brands of routers in the US and the dominant name in Amazon's best-sellers chart, could be banned in the US. Authorities say the Chinese-made devices, which have been found to contain vulnerabilities in the past, pose a national security risk.

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal citing people familiar with the matter, investigators at the Commerce, Defense and Justice departments have opened their own probes into TP-Link, and authorities could ban the sale of its routers in the US next year. The sources say an office of the Commerce Department has subpoenaed TP-Link.

TP-Link has around 65% of the US market for routers used in homes and small businesses. It gained another 5% share of the market in just the third quarter of this year, the WSJ said. Eleven of the top twenty best-selling routers on Amazon are from the Shenzhen-headquartered company, including the number one (AX3000) and number two (AX1800).

In October, Microsoft exposed a complex network of compromised devices that Chinese hackers are using to launch highly evasive password spray attacks against Microsoft Azure customers, including think tanks, government and nongovernment organizations, and Defense Department suppliers.

This network, dubbed CovertNetwork-1658, has been actively stealing credentials from customers since August 2023. The attacks use a botnet of thousands of small office and home office (SOHO) routers, cameras, and other Internet-connected devices. At its peak, there were more than 16,000 devices in the botnet, most of which were TP-Link routers.

There have been numerous instances where vulnerabilities were discovered in TP-Link routers. In May, a critical vulnerability with a CVSS score of 10.0 was found in the Archer C5400X tri-band router for gaming. By exploiting it, an unauthenticated attacker could inject malicious commands and gain full remote code execution privileges on the vulnerable device.

In 2023, it was reported that Chinese state hackers were infecting TP-Link routers with custom, malicious firmware. This news arrived just months after the US government said Mirai Botnet operators were using TP-Link routers for DDoS attacks.

The affordability of TP-Link's routers is one reason for their popularity. The Justice Department is investigating whether this pricing strategy violates laws prohibiting potential monopolies by selling products below manufacturing cost, according to a person familiar with the matter.

TP-Link sells its products in the US through a business unit based in California. Asked about potential actions against the company, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington said the US was using the guise of national security to "suppress Chinese companies." He added that Beijing would "resolutely defend" the lawful rights and interests of Chinese firms.

Whether a ban on TP-Link routers does happen will ultimately be decided by the Trump administration, which has taken a hardline approach to China. Trump showed with Huawei during his first stint as President that he isn't afraid to go after big Chinese companies. What such a move would mean for millions of TP-Link customers is unclear.

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TP-Link routers could be banned in the US over national security concerns

 

[Xelions]

Do any of your items have TP-Link markings? Yeah, the router, the cameras, the powerboard, the lightglobe, the bluetooth dongle, the jacket, the parachute.... F*ck me!

This is becoming a farce. First Huawei, then ZTE, etc, now TP-Link, what's next.. Lenovo

 

[madboyv1]

Do any of your items have TP-Link markings? Yeah, the router, the cameras, the powerboard, the lightglobe, the bluetooth dongle, the jacket, the parachute.... F*ck me!

This is becoming a farce. First Huawei, then ZTE, etc, now TP-Link, what's next.. Lenovo

Don't give the authorities any ideas now...

Oh what am I saying, Lenovo has been under the microscope ever since the DoD and several other agencies heavy restricted or otherwise banned Lenovo computers from accessing large swaths of internal networks, going as far back as 2005...

 

[veLa]

You know why TP-Link has such high penetration for home users and small businesses? The price. You can get a quality PoE managed switch for a couple hundred bucks.

If someone else wants to take that market, go ahead and jump in.

 

[magoid]

I have a lot of they stuff, like 6 routers and one camera. A bunch of them are over a decade old. And not a single one of them died on me. Not even a unit that spend over a year on the floor on a empty apartment, suffering in a 80 to 90% humidity environment. This is military-grade level of robustness.

But I do not run their firmware forever. In fact I bricked a couple of those routers playing with alternative firmware, like DD-WRT and Open-WRT, the last one being responsible for bricking them.

 

[Durch]

Maybe, just maybe, US companies should start manufacturing their own products again, make them affordable and offer support for more than 2 years before they are to be thrown in the garbage to keep shareholders happy by forced obsolescence.

This sounds like lobbying to me.

 

[axiomatic13]

That is an Imperial Shuttle, not a combo router.

 

[StrikerRocket]

Chinese companies selling their products at a loss in order to be able to easily steal sensitive data...
God, what a suprise!

The Chinese have been siphoning western knowledge and technology innovations for decades now, with the help of big corporations which moved their factories to China to make more profit.
Now, we are beginning to see the backlash.
They have good universities, schools where children are disciplined and go there to work and learn something useful whereas in France and other western countries, we have ***** students, for the most part, who don't know how to read or write anymore! Gorgeous!
A bit of a caricature, but barely...

 

[Endymio]

Maybe, just maybe, US companies should start manufacturing their own products again, make them affordable...

Most people wrongly believe labor costs are the issue with US manufacturing, when the labor differential between the US and China is today much smaller than it was 50 years ago. The real problem is the regulatory climate -- 100,000+ pages of ever-changing laws and regulations that businesses must follow precisely, or be fined into oblivion. In the last year of the Obama Administration, new manufacturing regulations were being made at the rate of more than one per day. No business can keep up with that changing set of rules.

.... and offer support for more than 2 years before they are to be thrown in the garbage to keep shareholders happy by forced obsolescence.

Now you're just being silly. A router becomes "obsolete" only when you yourself choose to purchase one with higher bandwidth or new features. And that affects Chinese-made routers exactly as much as it does US ones.

 

[hahahanoobs]

Ban and tariff culture.
What we get instead of competition.

 

[Anton Longshot]

National security concerns?
Are we talking about Trump?

 

[Endymio]

National security concerns?
Are we talking about Trump?

We're talking about efforts to protect national security, an issue Biden largely ignored. Remember the Chinese spy balloons that he first denied existed -- then allowed to complete their mission across the entire US before shooting them down?

Any more questions?

 

[Liranan]

Can't compete? Ban!

When you sanction the world you sanction yourself.

We're talking about efforts to protect national security, an issue Biden largely ignored. Remember the Chinese spy balloons that he first denied existed -- then allowed to complete their mission across the entire US before shooting them down?

Any more questions?

Fortunately most of the world doesn't live behind the Iron Curtain that is the west and knows the truth.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

We're talking about efforts to protect national security, an issue Biden largely ignored. Remember the Chinese spy balloons that he first denied existed -- then allowed to complete their mission across the entire US before shooting them down?

Any more questions?

Please keep the conspiracy BS to truth social or X.

Anymore questions?

 

[loki1944]

About damn time.

 

[nismo91]

I started using TP-Link around 2009, I think right when it first started booming. before that linksys were the commonly found household routers, most notably the iconic blue WRT54G router. the wireless-N was just launched so it's time for a new router, and the base linksys model could only do draft-N spec so I got myself a gigabit wireless n tplink router instead for similar price.

I noticed that after a few years they don't perform as good, either dropping connections or becoming slow. so I bought another tp-link every 3 years or so, I mean it wasn't expensive, the yearly internet bill is way more than the router itself. anyway after few routers being replaced I stopped using tp-link in 2019 and started trying out other brands. I have mixed luck with other brands, but so far I am more inclined to use anything other than tp-link.

few months ago my 2019 router went bad again so I bought yet another brand (fs). during my shopping I found out that tp-link had no1 sales by far. it was just available everywhere. last month I had to buy a small usb wireless dongle for my office and the only thing available immediately were all tp-link.

I was seriously surprised because there's many chinese routers manufacturer out there but tp-link is leading by a wide margin. with this kind of success it's only a matter of time before they end up like huawei & zte.

 

[opckieran]

Toilet Paper Link should have been banned a long time ago. State-sponsored corporations are just the worst; imagine paying taxes to lower the cost of goods for a foreign country! (We do this with pharmaceuticals too and it’s absolutely atrocious)

Please keep the conspiracy BS to truth social or X.

Anymore questions?

So the 11 year Hunter Pardon didn’t actually happen then? And Sleepy Joe was lucid this whole term? And X currently having a near 1:1 R/L ideological distribution now makes it conspiratorial?

 

[Endymio]

Fortunately most of the world doesn't live behind the Iron Curtain that is the west and knows the truth.

Coming from someone who actually lived behind the Iron Curtain prior to the fall of the USSR, I can safely say you don't have a clue what you're talking about.

Please keep the conspiracy BS to truth social or X.

The facts are as I stated. Sorry they trigger you. The Biden Administration did initially claim the spy balloons didn't exist, and after acknowledging them, did allow at least one to complete its mission across the entire US. A conspiracy would be to suggest Biden had nefarious motives for so doing.

 

[BuckarooBonzaii]

With all the hacks, security issues, and people still buy TP-Link. Cost verses security, which do I choose.

 

[human7]

Meanwhile, you can still buy routers from the the other 4000 or so companies that are also clearly Chinese from Amazon or anywhere else (I don't know what the number is, I pulled 4000 out of a hat). Several years ago I bought a Tenda router for cheap. Works fine, still have it, though I don't use it anymore. Probably nothing shady with the company (any more than any other), but clearly Chinese.

If the U.S. government is going to go after companies like TP-Link, they need to just put a whole trade embargo in place. I don't want that to happen, the chaos would be bad enough to speak nothing of the price issues, but anything short is playing whac-a-mole. With one "whac", 10,000 holes, and a mole sticking out of every one.

 

[HeeeF]

With all the hacks, security issues, and people still buy TP-Link. Cost verses security, which do I choose.

I'd like to know if running OpenWRT negates these concerns.

 

[toooooot]

Mine is in the picture. It seems like a very formal punishment considering millions of TPLink routers will stay operational for many years after ban.

It is not wrong. China is not our friend.
It has huge influence on us. Letting it be the hands that hold everything from collapsing is
not a smart thing. The only question is how quickly other steps will follow.
Talking with people, I notice how little they realized the difference between China 30 years and China now. It is a huge threat, a threat that like a sponge quickly absorbs every technology it can put its hands on.

 

[toooooot]

With all the hacks, security issues, and people still buy TP-Link. Cost verses security, which do I choose.

I tried many different routers over the years. TP link was the first one that did not have bugs interrupting connection. It meant a lot to me, I only used theirs since.

 

[Liranan]

Remember when the NSA were caught installing backdoors and spyware on Cisco and other routers and switches? Or what about the offices they have at major telecom companies?

That Utah data centre needs to be filled and Snowden revealed how they do it (Echelon was just a tip of the iceberg).

Coming from someone who actually lived behind the Iron Curtain prior to the fall of the USSR, I can safely say you don't have a clue what you're talking about.


The facts are as I stated. Sorry they trigger you. The Biden Administration did initially claim the spy balloons didn't exist, and after acknowledging them, did allow at least one to complete its mission across the entire US. A conspiracy would be to suggest Biden had nefarious motives for so doing.

You went from a so called Iron Curtain to an even worse one. The fact that you keep talking about spy balloons, without understanding how spying works, when the US runs the largest spy network proves my point.

 

[Axeia]

So going by the comments TP-link is bad because
1) it's Chinese spyware
2) it's insecure

For 1, where is the proof? (Also where's the proof that Huawei did?*
For 2 ehh, yeah welcome to routers. The category where you're sold a device that maybe gets one or two updates. That's not a tp link problem.
TP link being the biggest means they're the most interesting target. I don't think they actually do worse than say Netgear.

Want to keep up to date? Get a router that supports something like the OpenWRT firmware, added bonus is a lot more features and in some cases stability.

*You know who has been proven to build backdoors into their network devices? American owned Cisco! So I trust TP link more than I do Cisco.
https://www.theregister.com/2019/05/02/cisco_vulnerabilities/