Well, it’s been pretty obviuos for a while now that China’s been hacking into some of America’s most important businesses and government agencies and stealing reams of data. We’ve heard countless reports about Pentagon info being stolen orabout critical data on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter being plucked from defense contractors networks — with China being the main suspect.

Well, former U.S. counter-terrorism czar –currently running his own cybersecurity firm — Richard Clarke is coming out and saying that all electronics made in China may well have built-in trapdoors allowing Chinese malware to infect American systems on command. The malware could do everything from take over a device to disabling it to secretly siphoning information off of it.

Just remember, plenty of military electronics parts are sourced from China too. U.S.-based defense contractors routinely buy things like processors and circuit boards — that end up on the Pentagon’s most advanced weapons, everything from fighter jets to nuclear submarines — from brokers who get such parts in China. As you know, these parts often prove fake, something that’s dangerous enough due to the high risk of a fake part failing. What’s to stop real parts made in China from carrying an equally dangerous cyber trapdoor?

http://defensetech.org/2012/03/29/richar...-infected/

He should know!

Our "government" did it first to steal intellectual property and enforce crony-capitalism.

Unless you have 0 level control -hardware-

you will never have security.

A savy tech company(like Tyan for example) -could- opensource some engineering software and let us design our own comuputers, and "print" them out.

Make a bundle$$$

BIOS should be free software, so should firmware.

I wouldn't design mine like typical ATX/BTX

If I had the option to have a custom one printed.

Let us design our own mobos!

Make a bundle.

Give a a full line of flashable microprocessors and some code tools that are free and open.

LoP Guest  Wrote:

LoP Guest  Wrote:

Lifelong political hack.

Zero time in the semi industry.

Another Beltway self-promoting moran - this does not mean that planting stuff in micros is impossible, merely that he is making BS statements for self-hype. Look at meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.


Guys like this pick & choose from the crap consultants gin up (invariably to generate more work)

Lets me guess...

You know about the verification of the templates done from the secured masters, to the ones used in the manufacturing done in China by a corporate in house inspectors or inspectors right?..

All is green, it's clean right?...

But it is CHINA... as in a foreign ran country, as in they can do damn well what they want, how they want, when they want, "regardless" of manufacturing contractual arrangements..

It means it is YOU that do not know enough about the entire processes of not just semiconductor manufacturing processes, but the more subtle and overriding processes of a countries "political policies".. it is your corporation you work for that is a fool, and an idiot, to deal with what is still a "Socialist republic" country..

At what point did you lose the ability to use common sense?...

You are dealing with what Russia used to be officially, and you expect them not to take advantage of the system, and incorporate a "ghost hub" in between the servers and the recipient?

You are talking about a country, that built and is still building entire "cities" that are barely even inhabited and many not at all..

Did it ever occur to you that the "industry sectors" of those "off limits" cities to foreigners, are "duplicating" any type of American or other foreign made products, ranging from DOD to civilian levels?

By duplicating them "WITH" the necessary flaws, and back doors in electronics made within them, and using Russian assistance in software and hardware engineering, it's a simple matter of using "mission creep" to introduce them back into the American population, and very slowly back into the DOD world, and insuring that random inspections, are not "random", by well paid and or blackmailed American traitors( from the shipping inspectors, to the politicians including POTUS), who may or may not even be aware they are a traitor, because of the tentacled way it is delivered to them..

You really think Russia just "gave up?....

You really think China is "not" a repository for Socialism? (it is still a socialist republic)

Had it even occurred to the very NIMRODS (which is the correct spelling BTW) that you work for to even investigate this?.. no?.. why?... because it does not affect their bottom line yet, which then begs the question..

Who is the greater fool here?.. You?.. or Them?...

People constantly have a stigma over Russian technologies, because they used and still use "tubes" for electronics..

Nothing could be further from reality then thinking that way..

"It is best to be the fool, and perceived the idiot in the room, as many things are said and done in front of those deemed incapable of understanding them, such is the foolishness of Pride"

China is the headquarters "for" Russia, and we have handed them the keys to most if not all our civilian, and government projects by now...

It no wonder that it is possible to get through our security systems nowadays, and ask yourself this poster:

Did any of these problems happen when it was either Americans making the goods?, or even Japan?....

Counterfeit/doctored stuff shows up all the time, and there are myriad ways to detect them. Why always tip your hand if you find something that isn't what it appears to be? Why not just feed it what you want to feed it?

On a larger scale, why not let them exhaust resources on stuff you may already know about? Or better yet, plant bogus crap that incriminates in-house experts as being less than loyal? Who knows what all is being done?

I am confident that with our best and brightest leadership that we can withstand whatever the commie bastages can bring!

LoP Guest  Wrote:

Luvapottamus  Wrote:

About a month after the warranty timer chip pops a capacitor.

It may seem like that - in fact you can pretty easily calculate the life expectancy of electronics. Engineering groups are told to make the cheapest that meets spec, not something reliable. Just do the bare minimum. Keep customers buying the same crap over and over again (and they do!)

Wasn't always that way. Started back in the 60's when business schools started churning out efficiency experts. Took them a half century, but they finally drove nearly every US Manufacturing facility out of business. Wall Street and Big 8 (now less, lol) Consulting firms made a killing. Top tier of Management got their gold 'chutes. Sockholders got a few % ROI. Employees got the shaft. Communities were annihilated.

When I was an electronic technician about 25 years ago I used to test prototype electronics to failure before sending a few to UL (those guys test to DESTRUCTION; to look for failures which may be a safety hazard -think FIRE, lol) .

As an electronic engineering tech I connected temperature probes to every electronic component of the test device and fired it up and recorded the temperature -looks pretty hairy when you have like 400 wires snaking out the external case, lol.

From this data the engineer who designed the device can determine the MTBF (mean time between failure) of said device. It was common back in the day to discard the data for the first 30 -90 days of operation of said device, as the odds of an "infant Failure" would skew the MTBF data set.


Thats a primary reason a lot of consumer electronic products only have a 30-90 day warranty-after this period of time it is much more likely the device will survive its target MTBF failure rate.


I seriously doubt they do this in china. Merely an observation.

I would worry about it more if, and when, a backdoor was found.

China once had access to the governments' windoze backdoors- but I don't see that happening anymore.

I think here mainly we're talking about EEPROM's. I can imagine a device utilizing programming that is built in China could have secret code stashed in it... after all WE developed the technique. It would only make sense if the device had wi-fi (I'm only thinking about surveillance- not sabotage). TV's and cellphones. Was kind of upset to find out my TV had wi-fi the other day :(

Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. NSAT&T put themselves in the middle with the 2wire ADSL modem (think about 'man in the middle attacks'... such as an advanced version of droidsheep or faceniff). Best way around that would be to find one of the really old Bellsouth modems that can do bridging and to let your linux firewall handle the PPPoe....