Juniper Spy Code Problem

Juniper, a major manufacturer of networking equipment, said on Thursday it found spying code planted in certain models of its firewalls, an alarming discovery that echoes of state-sponsored tampering.

                                               

The affected products are those running ScreenOS, one of Juniper's operating systems that runs on a range of appliances that act as firewalls and enable VPNs. ScreenOS versions 6.2.0r15 through 6.2.0r18 and 6.3.0r12 through 6.3.0r20 are vulnerable, according to an advisory.

The unauthorized code was found during a recent internal review, wrote Bob Worrall, Juniper's chief information officer. He did not indicate where Juniper thinks the code originated.

Juniper has released critical patches to fix the problems.