# US FCC Bans Imported Advanced Robots Over Supply-Chain Risk and UniPwn-Class Takeover Vulnerabilities (CVE-2025-35027)

> On 2026-07-28 the FCC, acting on a White House National Security Determination, added foreign-made advanced robotic devices (humanoid and quadruped robots) and connected power inverters to its Covered List, blocking new equipment authorizations. The order explicitly cites UniPwn-class BLE takeover flaws (CVE-2025-35027 and related CVEs) in Chinese manufacturer Unitree's Go2/G1/H1/B2 robots, an unpatched cloud-tunnel backdoor in the older Go1 (CVE-2025-2894), and systemic risk from insecure over-the-air updates and always-on connectivity.

- **Published:** 2026-07-29T00:00:00Z
- **Last reviewed:** 2026-07-29T00:00:00Z
- **Canonical:** https://intel.threadlinqs.com/threat/TL-2026-1751
- **ID:** TL-2026-1751
- **Severity:** HIGH (CVSS 7.3)
- **Category:** SUPPLY_CHAIN
- **Status:** ACTIVE
- **Detections:** 9 · **IOCs:** 20 (full data via the Threadlinqs MCP server — Purple tier)
- **CVEs:** CVE-2025-35027, CVE-2025-60017, CVE-2025-60250, CVE-2025-60251, CVE-2025-2894, CVE-2026-27509, CVE-2026-27510

## Description

On July 27-28, 2026, an Executive Branch interagency national-security body sent the FCC a National Security Determination covering foreign-produced advanced robotic devices and connected power inverters, and the FCC (under Chairman Brendan Carr) formally added both categories to its Covered List under the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act framework, barring new models from receiving the equipment authorization required to import, market, or sell wireless devices in the United States. The determination is prospective (already-authorized models may continue to be sold) and can be overridden with case-by-case approval from the Departments of War or Homeland Security; federal agencies retain purchasing authority.

The order's cybersecurity rationale rests heavily on a documented pattern of critical vulnerabilities in Unitree's robot line, the dominant Chinese humanoid/quadruped vendor (with Agibot and UBTech). Most prominently, the 'UniPwn' vulnerability chain (publicly disclosed 2025-09-20, tracked as CVE-2025-35027 plus CVE-2025-60017, CVE-2025-60250 and CVE-2025-60251) combines a hardcoded AES-CFB128 key/IV, a trivial string-match authentication bypass, and unsanitized command injection in the robot's Bluetooth Low Energy WiFi-configuration interface. An attacker in BLE range sends an AES-encrypted 'unitree' string to bypass authentication, then injects a shell command into the SSID/password fields (';$(cmd);#'), which executes as root via wpa_supplicant_restart.sh when the WiFi service restarts. The exploit is wormable: a compromised robot can scan for and infect nearby Unitree units over BLE without operator interaction, enabling a robot botnet. The flaw was privately reported to Unitree from April 2025 onward; the manufacturer was unresponsive and reportedly said a fix would take 'quarters or years,' prompting public disclosure five months later with no confirmed comprehensive patch.

A second, independently disclosed RCE chain affects the Unitree Go2 specifically (CVE-2026-27509, CVE-2026-27510; publicly documented 2026-02-27, patched in firmware V1.1.13). The Go2 runs Eclipse CycloneDDS for inter-process control messaging over an unauthenticated publish/subscribe bus; an attacker who joins DDS Domain 0 can publish a crafted 'Request_' message with api_id=1002 to the 'rt/api/programming_actuator/request' topic, causing the robot to write attacker-supplied Python to disk at /unitree/etc/programming/{uuid}.py and bind it to a physical controller hotkey — full root RCE requiring only a single button press to trigger, with no authentication or payload validation anywhere in the chain (CVE-2026-27509). When Unitree hardened DDS topic discovery, a companion vector (CVE-2026-27510) achieved the same outcome via tampering with the Android companion app's local SQLite database (dog_programme table) and re-syncing it to the robot.

These acute flaws sit atop an older, still-unpatched supply-chain issue: the discontinued Go1 quadruped (CVE-2025-2894, disclosed by Austin Hackers Anonymous on 2025-03-27) ships with an undocumented backdoor — the CloudSail remote-access service operated by Chinese firm Zhexi Technology — that auto-starts on boot and opens a persistent peer-to-peer tunnel giving anyone with the correct API key full remote control, camera access, and network pivot capability, without owner knowledge or a patch. Vulnerable Go1 units were confirmed operating inside networks at MIT, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of Waterloo, and Go2/G1/H1 units are deployed in sensitive contexts including UK police armed-response units and China's PLA. This recurring pattern of embedded/default-credential backdoors, unresponsive vendor disclosure handling, and unauthenticated network/BLE control surfaces is the direct evidentiary basis for the FCC's 'broad attack surfaces' and OTA-update-risk language in the National Security Determination. The same July 2026 action separately targets Chinese-made grid-connected solar/battery inverters (Huawei Digital Power, Sungrow, Growatt, GoodWe, Solis/Ginlong) over remote-firmware grid-disruption risk, following a June 2026 draft rule; note the Department of Energy's January 2026 inspection of 30 Chinese inverters had found no malicious hardware, so the inverter action rests on architectural/connectivity risk rather than a confirmed device-level compromise, unlike the robot vulnerabilities which are independently, technically confirmed.

## MITRE ATT&CK

- T1595 Active Scanning
- T1592 Gather Victim Host Information
- T1588 Obtain Capabilities
- T1587 Develop Capabilities
- T1195 Supply Chain Compromise
- T1078 Valid Accounts
- T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter
- T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution
- T1546 Event Triggered Execution
- T1068 Exploitation for Privilege Escalation
- T1601 Modify System Image
- T1027 Obfuscated Files or Information
- T1552 Unsecured Credentials
- T1120 Peripheral Device Discovery
- T1046 Network Service Discovery
- T1210 Exploitation of Remote Services
- T1125 Video Capture
- T1219 Remote Access Tools
- T1573 Encrypted Channel
- T1041 Exfiltration Over C2 Channel
- T1565 Data Manipulation

## Sources

- [America bans imported robots due to supply chain and security risks](https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/07/29/america-bans-imported-robots-due-to-supply-chain-and-security-risks/5280145)
- [FCC Adds Foreign-Produced Power Inverters and Robots to Covered List](https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adds-foreign-produced-power-inverters-and-robots-covered-list-0)
- [United States Bans Chinese Humanoid & Quadruped Robots, Citing National Security](https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2026/07/28/united-states-bans-chinese-humanoid--quadruped-robots-citing-national-security/)
- [FCC Bans Chinese Humanoid Robots and Power Inverters Linked to Confirmed Backdoors](https://www.techtimes.com/articles/321890/20260728/fcc-bans-chinese-humanoid-robots-power-inverters-linked-confirmed-backdoors.htm)
- [Unitree Humanoid Robot Enters Europe Days After Pentagon Flags It as Chinese Military Tech](https://www.techtimes.com/articles/321011/20260720/unitree-humanoid-robot-enters-europe-days-after-pentagon-flags-it-chinese-military-tech.htm)
- [GHSA-27p8-m7h9-xchc: Multiple robotic products by Unitree sharing a common firmware command injection (CVE-2025-35027)](https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-27p8-m7h9-xchc)
- [NVD CVE-2025-35027 Detail](https://services.nvd.nist.gov/rest/json/cves/2.0?cveId=CVE-2025-35027)
- [Bin4ry/UniPwn — Unitree BLE exploitation toolkit and disclosure writeup](https://github.com/Bin4ry/UniPwn)
- [From DDS Packets to Robot Shells: Two RCEs in Unitree Robots (CVE-2026-27509 & CVE-2026-27510)](https://boschko.ca/unitree-go2-rce/)
- [CVE-2025-2894 - Unitree Go1 Robot Dog Backdoor Control Channel](https://secalerts.co/vulnerability/CVE-2025-2894)
- [Chinese robotics manufacturer left backdoor in product](https://www.axios.com/2025/04/01/threat-spotlight-backdoor-in-chinese-robots-future-of-cybersecurity)
- [FCC bans foreign-produced solar inverters, grid lockout begins today](https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2026/07/28/fcc-bans-foreign-produced-solar-inverters-grid-lockout-begins-today/)
- [US FCC Bans Sales of Foreign-Made Power Inverters and Robots](https://www.govinfosecurity.com/us-fcc-bans-sales-foreign-made-power-inverters-robots-a-32352)

## Full data

Detection queries (Splunk SPL / Microsoft KQL / Sigma) and IOC values require the Threadlinqs MCP server (Purple tier): https://intel.threadlinqs.com/mcp

Canonical: https://intel.threadlinqs.com/threat/TL-2026-1751