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Posted on 05/15/2008 5:03:00 PM PDT by ricks_place
An FBI presentation states that China has counterfeited Cisco Systems network routers and may be using the equipment to penetrate U.S. government and private sector computer networks.
Federal authorities in February seized some 400 counterfeit Cisco Systems knockoffs worth $76 million. The equipment included routers, switches, gigabit interface converters and WAN interface cards. Among the purchasers of the fake equipment were the U.S. Naval Academy, U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center, U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center, U.S. Air Base at Spangdahelm, Germany, the Bonneville Power Administration, General Services Administration, and the defense contractor Raytheon, which makes key missile and weapons systems.
The FBI briefing slides on the case stated that while there are “intelligence gaps” on why the Chinese made the counterfeit equipment it could have been for profit or as part of a state-sponsored operation. Additionally the scope of the Chinese counterfeit equipment may extend beyond routers to include fake IT equipment such as PCs and printers.
Under a section titled “The Threat,” the FBI described the effort as “IT subversion/supply chain attack” that could “cause immediate or premature system failure during usage.”
The counterfeit equipment also could be used to “gain access to otherwise secure systems” and to “weaken cryptographic systems.”
The briefing slide said the Chinese information warfare efforts require “intimate access to target systems.”
Perhaps all of the posters who have appeared recently on FR who state they they are from the PRC could come to this thread and weigh in.
And WHAT preceded all this? That’s right, a deal between China and Cisco Systems. I remember the smiling visage of what’s-his-face, CEO of Cisco talking about what a great deal it was.
YOU and all the rest of us are suckers for doing any business with China. This is the price we pay for lifting them out of poverty. Bunch of rice-sucking parasites...
>>Yes, sir, China is our friend. /sarcasm
Perhaps it’s a “Special Relationship”, like the one Comrade Greenspan boasted about with the City of London?
Corporatism... communism... nothing to see here; move along and worship the hive. Bzzzzzz.
At least it's only in our military's systems. I'd hate to think the kid's Xboxes were messed up. /s
Here is an article you might be interested in.
Possible solution to this would be for the firmware source code to be examined, certified, and held in escrow by a trusted agency. New hardware would be submitted to said agency for comparison and certification before being placed into service.
Something comparable to the key certification available in the software world?
This wouldn’t solve the problem. It is a piece of the solution, but it is not the whole solution.
Since so many commodity chips are now being made in China, let me paint a scenario for you all:
Let’s use a fairly easy scenario: a commodity Ethernet chip, a knock-off of a well known design that has become a second-tier product. Some 10/100 Mbit product that has only a 10BaseT interface, for example.
Into this chip using modern chip technology, it is possible to lay down a tremendous amount of logic that is not needed for an Ethernet chip. The PRC engineers could design in logic that will ‘sniff’ the packet stream and do something upon seeing a highly improbable combination of octets in the input stream.
Let’s not worry about the specifics of what the chip does when it sees the wake-up sequence. The point is, the chip could work perfectly for what you want - ie, an Ethernet transceiver and interface to a PCI card or motherboard. Perfectly. There’s just a whole lot of extra logic buried in the chip.
How would you find this? Well, you’d have to pull apart the chip, put it under a microscope, and figure out what is on the chip and see if there are blocks of logic that aren’t explained by the primary function of being an ethernet chip.
That’s the simplest scenario. You could make the same case for just about any chip within a computer; Ethernet chips are the best case, because they can do something upon seeing the correct frame that doesn’t require firmware, CPU or software interaction upon seeing the particular frame.
With the increasing free-trade agenda coming out of our moronic “leaders” in DC, the only practical way to certify that network interface chips are secure would be to use FPGA’s of US manufacture, chosen at random through blind purchases, and certified code to program the FPGA.
>>How would you find this?
>>Well, you’d have to pull apart the chip,
>>put it under a microscope,...
Ah, you’re right. Now that I think of it, with VLSI tech (or whatever the latest is), you’ve essentially got whole chips within chips. Processors, RAM, ROM... all packed together on the same wafer.
So it’s not as simple as pulling out an EPROM and scanning the address space.
Quite the clever pickle we’re in.
Just sell the Chinese only Microsoft products. Then they’ll be to busy chasing and fixing bugs to have time to hack.
Why do you think so?I am not an engineer,some posts have very complicated words and phrasing and I cant get its meaning.It make me headache. o_o
As for the topic,I just wanna ask that isn't American's technology more advanced than China's?That's what we all know and believe in.If china can do such a trick which sounds more like in a novel about spy or science fiction,then I should say I'm shocked and feel a little proud.Well,seems it failed at last.At least USA have some good QC system.Maybe Chinese should learn more before they run such a risk in a domain they know little.
ok,that's all.About the other charges,I only can say they are more like market economy and some bad guys break the law.Tell you something,It's real,that there are many thiefs,bandits,murderer,and almost all criminal you can imagine among chinese.Sorry for we are not all angels from heaven.
bttt
ping
Your example is intriguing but .....
It would be hard for a low level thing (Enet chip) to do a high level function I would think. It could I guess stop working though - if you see “12345abcde” - go into degraded mode. That could be done I would think. I don’t really see how an enet chip is going to “call home” or steal the chocolate chip cookie recipe or whatever.
We will never learn to not trust Communists or Liberal/Socialist/Progressive/Marxists.
Gosh, what a beneficient bunch. Lead poisoned toys, poisoned medicine, poisoned pet food, poisoned FOOD food...fake routers, cyber attacks...PNTR was a GREAT idea. Thanks, Bill Clinton.
Tired of chicoms.
Interesting tagline. HIGHLY interesting that there’s as little content as their is grammar in our post...except for well, if you can’t beat China you deserve what you get angle. Interesting.
But it's the corporates that are giving their secrets to China. A bottom line increase in a quarter is seen as more important than any of those silly trade secrets.
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