Third party support is still available. Many people with secondhand Cisco equipment, but no contract (and therefore no CCO login) rely on their own network of

Third party support is still available. Many people with secondhand Cisco equipment, but no contract (and therefore no CCO login) rely on their own network of contacts to share things like firmware updates with them. After I terminated my employment at Cisco Systems, some of my departmental coworkers started a consulting business to provide services related to the products that we used to work on, including maintenance services that duplicate and compete with professional services offered by Cisco itself. I'm also earning a living as a thirdparty support provider, but not for Cisco products. All of my customers have been denied support by the original vendors for economic reasons (can't afford it) or corporate decisions to discontinue support. In addition to my own experience operating and reverse engineering the products I support, I have benefited from corporate leaks of documents and binaries as well as being passed material from paying customers. I even generate licenses on my own for products that aren't sold anymore, without permission of the original vendors, but they know about it and haven't requested that I stop. Therefore, I am certain that anyone subject to a government embargo would be able to procure these services from a third party or hire a local hacker to take care of these things.