Iran claims US botnets or backdoors disabled routers from Cisco, Juniper, and Fortinet

Iran says routers and related gear from Cisco, Juniper, Fortinet, and MikroTik rebooted or went offline during recent strikes.

It blames hidden backdoors or planted botnets linked to the US, rather than ordinary equipment failures.

The claim remains unverified because internet access is heavily restricted, and Washington has not specifically responded.

The episode underscores how critical network hardware could be disabled through pre-positioned implants during military operations.