The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday said U.S. businesses and consumers could continue to buy some Netgear routers, exempting the company’s products from a new foreign router ban meant to protect national security.
After the Department of Defense determined that Netgear’s Nighthawk and Orbi routers and cable modems do not “pose unacceptable risks” to national security, the FCC said it was excluding them from its March 23 ban on routers manufactured outside the U.S.
Neither the FCC nor the Pentagon explained the military’s determination that Netgear products were safe enough for U.S. use. They did not respond to requests for comment about the basis for that conclusion. Netgear was the first company to win an exemption.
In its initial announcement of the ban, the FCC cited an interagency group’s conclusion that foreign-made routers represent “a supply chain vulnerability that could disrupt the U.S. economy, critical infrastructure, and national defense” and pose “a severe cybersecurity risk that could be leveraged to immediately and severely disrupt U.S. critical infrastructure and directly harm U.S. persons.”
Foreign-made routers have powered botnets, helped overseas hackers masquerade as legitimate U.S. network users and enabled serious cyberattacks against critical infrastructure, including the Volt, Flax and Salt Typhoon campaigns that the U.S. government has attributed to China.
Netgear manufactures its routers in Taiwan, Vietnam and Indonesia. The company’s reliance on Taiwan could pose a significant supply-chain problem, because Beijing has threatened to invade the island nation and has already tried to steal intellectual property from its domestic industries.
Netgear CEO Charles Prober praised the FCC’s decision in an online statement and said the company’s technology “meets rigorous standards.”
