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US and Canadian authorities have seized counterfeit Cisco hardware and product labels worth an estimated $76m following more than 400 raids. The US Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement last Thursday that Feds, customs officials and Royal Canadian Mounted Police have all been …

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  1. paulc
    Black Helicopters

    Counterfeit??? or just grey imports?

    are these items really counterfeit or is this just Cisco enlisting the aid of customs etc. to prevent grey imports from undermining their vast profit margin of "officially" sanctioned goods?

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  2. pctechxp

    How can you fake Cisco gear?

    The question is, whose gear were they actually supplying or were the circuit boards being knocked up in some Chinese sweatshop with someone else writing the software or having pirated copies of IOS loaded onto them.

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  3. Fred
    Thumb Down

    Ha....

    This is what i said last time... "Fake Cisco Routers"

    At least we know they fake em good now.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    74000 *labels* but how many routers?

    Sounds impressive, 74000 cisco routers, $73 million worth. But I have a small problem and it's in this sentence:

    "All together, ICE and CBP seized more than 74,000 counterfeit Cisco network components AND LABELS with a total estimated retail value of more than $73 million."

    AND LABELS?

    So if they had a roll of 20k labels, they've included an extra 20k in that figure? Talk about exaggeration! Can we have the real numbers please, how many CISCO fake routers were there, how many network cards, how many labels, how many 'components' (presumably cables, clips, etc.).

    And did they also include a notional value for the sticker? e.g. if the sticker said Cisco 2811, did they add an extra $2000 for the notional fake Cisco 2811 router?? And where did the cost per unit come from? (The wholesale price of the fakes, the retail price of the real thing, the wholesale price of the real thing, where??)

    Man, they're trying to make a case for a big budget, but these funny numbers just make me suspicious.

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  5. Matt Morgan

    does it work?

    Does it work? If you call Cisco do they support it? I mean, is this "counterfeit" in the sense of "looks and acts like the real thing" or is it just fake and when you get it and turn it on you realize it doesn't work right? I'm not worried as much about network infrastructure if it's the latter.

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Dumb idiots

    "In January two US brothers were charged with various crimes after they allegedly sold counterfeit Cisco equipment to several government agencies including the FBI, the Federal Aviation Authority and the Marine Corps"

    You must have balls the size of watermelons to sell hokey kit to the Feds. Either that, or be a window-licking retard itchin' for some private time at Rikers Island.

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  7. Dick Emery
    IT Angle

    In use?

    I wonder how many of these are actually running on peoples networks.

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    They are in the UK too...

    I've had a fake cisco switch. When it broke 5 minutes after opening the box I rang support and when I gave them the S/N they said it was sold in Saudi Arabia!

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  9. Joey Y
    Coat

    How could they tell they were fake?

    Did they have a user-friendly self-explanatory interface? Or was it that they failed to do a hostile takeover on all ajoining boxes in the warehouse?

    But, on a more serious note, I agree with the others that it would be nice to know if these are copycat electronics (with IOS?) or if they are genuine Cisco kit (or Cisco factory rejects) bound for the gray (or 'grey'? is that like 'color/colour'?) market.

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    Seems like an interesting way to reduce encryption key size...

    Hmmmm, if a deep pocketed organisation wanted to reduce the encryption key space used by select people, an interesting approach would be to sell them gear that "looks like the real thing", but actually has its encryption keys set to a known value...

    Hmmm.... ;->

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  11. Edwin
    Alien

    "we can...protect public safety"

    Oh dear. Are the lizardmen sending fake Cisco kit with built-in mind control to the unwary public?

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  12. Sillyfellow
    Pirate

    may allow access

    seems to me that this may very well be much more than 'fake' kit.

    i mean, if it looks and works the way it's supposed to then it's feasable to think that just maybe they have some interesting additions/modifications that allow access to the dodgy 'maker', as suggested in previous comment.

    think about it... if China wanted easy access to USA fbi (and other sensitive) networks.. all they would have to do is to manage to sell fake (but convincing and fully working) networking gear to them to implement on their networks...

    once installed, bingo.. covert access achieved. and what's more, perhaps the makers of the fake gear are able to do other things like shutdown the devices..

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