Cybersecurity

US Probes China-Founded Router Maker on National Security Fears

  • TP-Link has come to dominate home router market in the US
  • Company’s devices among those exploited in Chinese attacks

Workers on the production line at a TP-Link workshop in Shenzhen, China in 2020.

Photographer: Liang Xu/Xinhua /Getty Images
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The US government has launched a national-security investigation into TP-Link, the China-founded router maker whose equipment now dominates the American market and has been targeted in repeated Chinese cyber attacks, people familiar with the matter said.

The probe opens a new front in the US push to crack down on China-linked technology firms deemed a possible threat to US networks and data. It singles out a company that had largely escaped national-security notice even as TP-Link came to lead the market for home and small-office routers, which relay information from the internet to devices such as computers and smartphones.