FBI Says Military Had Counterfeit Cisco Routers

There are new developments in the case of the counterfeit Cisco routers, which we have been discussing for some time. The NYTimes updates the story after an FBI PowerPoint presentation made its way onto the Web. It seems that experts at Cisco have examined some of the counterfeit routers in detail and proclaimed that they contain no back doors. Others don't believe we can be so sure. "Last month, [DARPA] began distributing chips with hidden Trojan horse circuitry to military contractors who are participating in the agency's Trusted Integrated Circuits program. The goal is to test forensic techniques for finding hidden electronic trap doors, which can be maddeningly elusive... The threat was demonstrated in April when a team of computer scientists from the University of Illinois presented a paper at a technical conference in San Francisco detailing how they had modified a Sun Microsystems SPARC microprocessor... The researchers were able to create a stealth system that would allow them to automatically log in to a computer and steal passwords."

Comments

Not a big surprise.

[Smenj]

I work for a company that sells used electronics on eBay. We'll occasionally buy cheap gear over eBay too, then resell it at a profit. For many months now we've had a huge problem with counterfeit Cisco cards. It's amazing how detailed the counterfeiters are. My boss wrote up a detailed guide on how to spot fakes. Google "counterfeit cisco wic".

Re:And outsourcing....

[moderatorrater]

While essential, it's not the only step. Automatic tests of the router hardware, random checking, and employee control are all necessary steps if we really want our government networks to be secure.

Selling out the back door

[sjbe]

the counterfeit routers are made in the same factories by the same people who make the real routers; they just keep the assembly line running past the hours that Cisco is paying them for. That happens ALL the time. I've visited manufacturing plants in China and I've seen it happen with my own eyes. Selling out the back door is not surprising at all. In fact this is why I'm less worried than I might otherwise be about the gear having back doors or being otherwise compromised. Simplest explanation is just theft in one form or another.

does the LEGIT Cisco equipment contain back doors? Very good question. Got to be worrisome to the US military and security agencies. Much/most off the shelf hardware is made outside the US where it wouldn't me much of a stretch to imagine backdoors have been added by foreign governments. Same worries that other governments have about US made/designed software and hardware. And of course if you really want to get tin-foil-hat about it one has to wonder if our own government has had back doors installed. Very unlikely to be sure, but clearly possible.

That said, it's pretty low on the list of likely threats. Pretty hard to know exactly what gear will be placed where and what it will give you access to. Plus even with a back door, places with sensitive data are more likely to be monitoring the traffic which is harder to hide.

Technical details of malicious hardware

[Sam King]

For those of you who are interested, you can find more technical details of how we designed and implemented malicious hardware from here

-- computer scientists from University of Illinois

Re:And outsourcing....

[Detritus]

http://www.parascope.com/articles/0197/xerox.htm

Re:free software distributes the effort.

[Anonymous Coward]

"inTheLoo" is a twitter sockpuppet. He shifts from this to the post above to karma whore, but the message is the same. Use free software and all your problems will disappear. He doesn't understand nor does he care about capital costs or anything else - if only you would put your code on Sourceforge everything will be magically OK.

Not counting the one you're replying to, he's already posted in this article with two other accounts, so YOU WILL hear him out, or else. He's probably compensated on a per-post, per-account basis.

At heart, twitter is really a xenophobe, and his "Communist China is evil" argument is an old one.

Re:"Counterfeit" not an issue...

[Frosty Piss]

From what I understand, the counterfeit routers are made in the same factories by the same people who make the real routers; they just keep the assembly line running past the hours that Cisco is paying them for.

I keep hearing this. But look at the images of the hardware side by side ... Is it the same? No it's not. Clearly these two boards are not from the same manufacturing line.

Re:An Evil Competitor.

[Free the Cowards]

The military is now authorized to act against US Citizens in "an emergency". I think that 1807 is a little too far in the past to call "now".

Re:And outsourcing....

[Vancorps]

SONET, DS3, and DSUs in any quantity can be purchased for a computer without a problem. When you get into the terabit range you still have a lot of options.

For switching Cisco makes zero sense, HP gives you higher through-put for less money and they aren't the only ones. Let the router do the routing and the switch can do the switching.

The only reason Layer 3 and 4 switches are becoming commonplace is because routers get more and more expensive the higher up the stack you go. There is nothing worse than using a wire-speed layer 3 switch which is undergoing a heavy load from file transfers as a central routing gateway. Especially when you get into BGP and OSPF.

Terabit backplanes are nothing new though, easily achieved through distributed computing and for far less money.

Re:An Evil Competitor.

[dedazo]

Everything you own can be confiscated for suspicion of "making available" crappy RIAA music that can be found on any radio station. Your email, web browsing, phone conversations and church can all be monitored without a warrent [etc]

You know twitter, my dad and his brothers lived through Argentina's "Dirty War". I didn't really understand what they went through until I was a little older and he asked me to play (and pay attention to) one of his old LP records. It's amazing how a simple song will open our eyes to things you can't grasp when they are explained in other ways. If you ever have a chance to listen to "Yo Te Nombro" (would translate roughly to "I Say Your Name") by Nacha Guevara, do take the opportunity to do so. It's a powerful statement of all the things you lose (the most important of which is your own humanity) in an environment of total and complete repression.

I doubt you will ever stop humping the "I hate M$" horse, but maybe what you need is to have some sense of measure when you talk about what a horrible place the US has become now that the RIAA can search your computer, just so you can make a point about your racially-charged dislike of China, which I assume is no different from the one you've displayed in the past towards India and other countries.