Counterfeit Cisco Hardware Bypasses Security Checks With Modchips - Hackaday

Some pictures recently surfaced on social media, showing a small PCB tapped into four points on Cisco-branded boards.

A 2020 report by F-Secure details an investigation, comparing three switches marked as Cisco 2960X – one known genuine and two known counterfeits.

As you’d expect, it devotes quite a bit of time to comparing genuine and counterfeit boards, showing that the cloning process is pretty to-the-T, save for some part substitutions.

This mechanism also breaks during software updates, and absolutely, leaves some to be desired when it comes to its stated functionality.

That said, such fun insights can help us, say, enforce right-to-repair, enable hardware reuse, and thwart many predatory business practices in areas where laws fail us.

Posted in Reverse Engineering, Security Hacks Tagged cisco, counterfeit, i2c