Next up: Are the Chinese sneaking secret controller chips into products bound for our military aircraft? The Times of India reports this disturbing possibility at http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-04-17/us/28040752_1_chinese-spies-chinese-cyber-networks.
Listing out some of the examples of Chinese cyber spy penetration, [a US official] said: “We’re also seeing counterfeit routers and chips, and some of those chips have made their way into US military fighter aircraft.. You don’t sneak counterfeit chips into another nation’s aircraft to steal data. When it’s done intentionally, it’s done to degrade systems, or to have the ability to do so at a time of one’s choosing.”
This is a tactic straight out of Battlestar Galactica: disable the enemy fighters at the most critical moments, with technology you’ve sneaked in. But it’s real, it’s plausible, and it’s now.
We have outsourced our manufacturing to China, and they’ve returned the favor by hacking our networks and stealing our intellectual property. Is your organization, for instance, using Huawei routers instead of Cisco? Cisco is in real trouble, and if it dies, we may not even have a choice in enterprise-grade router equipment – that doesn’t spy on you, steal from you, or cripple you in a pinch. This is spooky, and it’s not science fiction: it’s here and now.