Texas AG sues TP-Hyperlink over purported connection to China

Texas is suing Wi-Fi router maker TP-Hyperlink for deceptively advertising and marketing the safety of its merchandise and permitting Chinese language hacking teams to entry People’ units, Legal professional Basic Ken Paxton has announced. Paxton initially began looking into TP-Link in October 2025. Texas Governor Greg Abbott later prohibited state workers from using TP-Link products in January of this yr.

TP-Hyperlink is not owned by a Chinese language firm and its merchandise are assembled in Vietnam, however Paxton’s lawsuit claims that as a result of the corporate’s “possession and supply-chain are tied to China” it is topic to the nation’s knowledge legal guidelines, which require firms to adjust to requests from Chinese language intelligence businesses. The lawsuit additionally says that firmware vulnerabilities in TP-Hyperlink’s {hardware} have already “uncovered tens of millions of shoppers to extreme cybersecurity dangers.”

TP-Hyperlink supplied the next assertion to Engadget in response to the lawsuit:

The claims made by the Texas Legal professional Basic’s workplace are with out benefit and shall be confirmed false. TP-Hyperlink Programs Inc. is an unbiased American firm. Neither the Chinese language authorities nor the CCP workouts any type of possession or management over TP-Hyperlink, its merchandise, or its consumer knowledge. TP-Hyperlink’s founder and CEO, Jeffrey Chao, resides in Irvine, CA, and isn’t and by no means has been a member of the CCP. To make sure the best stage of safety, our core operations and infrastructure are situated totally inside america, and all U.S. customers’ networking knowledge is saved securely on Amazon Internet Providers servers. We are going to proceed to vigorously defend our popularity as a trusted supplier of safe connectivity for American households.

TP-Hyperlink was reportedly being investigated on the federal stage in 2024 after its units have been related to the huge “Salt Typhoon” hack that accessed knowledge from a number of US telecom firms. Regardless of all indicators pointing to the federal authorities getting ready to ban TP-Hyperlink in 2025, Reuters reports that the Trump administration paused plans to ban the corporate’s routers in early February, forward of a gathering between President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping.

Replace, February 17, 3:38PM ET: Added assertion from TP-Hyperlink.