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Feds Ask IT Execs To Throw Away Cellphones After Visiting China
sholto writes "US intelligence agencies are advising top US IT executives to weigh their laptops before and after visiting China as one of many precautions against corporate espionage. Symantec Chief Technology Officer Mark Bregman said he was also advised to buy a new cellphone for each visit and to throw it away after leaving. Bregman said he kept a separate MacBook Air for use in China, which he re-images on returning, but claimed he didn't subscribe to the strictest policies. 'Bregman said the US was also concerned about its companies employing Chinese coders, particularly in security.'"
how much does data weigh? I'm sure the 1's are heavier than the 0's....
How would one know if the coder is working for the Chinese? (Or are they using racial profiling to fit that bill?)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Paranoia.
Symantec Chief Technology Officer Mark Bregman [...] was advised to buy a new cellphone for each visit
Yes, heaven forbid China learns the secret of bloated antivirus software that ignores state-sponsored keyloggers.
Amnesty International
I'm sure glad that the laptops and cellphones in question weren't MADE in China in the first place...
Oh, wait..
This is a substitute for a clever sig that fits within the maximum number of characters.
The laptops and cell phones were probably manufactured there. In fact most US businesses outsource there manufacturing overseas.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
The same outsources plants that produce the goods just do a second run at night to produce grey market versions. Microsoft found this out after finding perfect counterfeit copies of their software that were only distinguished by having serial numbers that were never activated in their database, the plants that were producing packaging and holograms for their official packing were making exact duplicates for the counterfeiters.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
How about using phones and notebooks manufactured in China? Is that ok or do we have to assume they are bugged-at-factory? Are the US starting to move their production lines back to home?
It's almost impossible to tell whether additional software has been installed unless you either 1) diff your HDD (hard and time consuming) or 2) weigh the laptop and see if any data has been added. The government is, for once, correct and providing helpful information.
More on this topic at this old Slashdot story.
The real story in the article should be "CTO of world's largest Windows security software company uses a mac."
Its far too easy for the Communist government to tap into those, a Thuraya or Iridium satellite phone should be a bit harder but if I went to China I'd still be using a one-time pad to send messages home.
Me just play joke.
Sucky sucky?
I'm just curious. Isn't it a bit of a coincidence that this warning comes out when there is a growing trade dispute with China happening now? We have been using China as our factory an major offshoring partner for quite a few years and now there are warnings.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
So they are able to bug your cell phone while it is in your pocket or in your hotel room charging. Or do they check all cell phones at the door like in The Dark Knight? Even when you RTFA it does not give you any support for these claims. I think he is a little paranoid.
As companies continue to send more jobs and more money over to china.
It is like asking to be raped, is it really rape anymore?
Mark Bregman needs to STFU.
(The following discussion is based on real experiences and is not meant to profile people, but to state facts.)
This is really ridiculous. If the Chinese want to steal our technology, all they have to do is to contact several of the thousands of Chinese nationals who are working in the US until they find someone who needs money or other help for their family back in China.
One company I worked for had a Chinese national who was not allowed to work on part of a project because it was protected technology. The same person could have dropped the entire project onto their iPod and carried it out the door, but did not.
The ethics problem is represented by an experience I had while at an American research university. A Chinese faculty member met with the Chinese students in order to tell them in America, cheating and other ethical breaches are not considered a good way to get ahead. This suggested certain cultural differences which should not be used to discriminate, but need to be recognized because of the risks involved.
-Todd
Omne ignotum pro magnifico.
The article is referring to planting physical keylogging or other devices on specific machines. As in breaking into your hotel room, opening up your laptop, and installing something that will send information back. This is why you should weigh before and after. TFA metions 3-letter agencies telling him to do this, so maybe they know something you don't.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
For all the barking of the agencies, it's obvious they haven't encountered the treatment I and my colleagues have encountered re-entering the US from abroad only to have laptops have the data examined, and that data be copied for "further analysis" or even the laptop confiscated for an undetermined amount of time. It's just a matter of time before other countries make the same advertisment about travel to the US.... What's the old saying (Kettle calling the Pot black).
me go pee pee in your coke!
The US border guards are just going to swipe the laptop and smart phones at customs anyway.
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
No, through nationalism. This is against a specific nationality, nothing to do with ethnicity. Taiwan is not covered by this warning, and they're the same stock.
Remember the Cold War, when the Soviets were 10-foot-tall super soldiers who could read your mind and fart atomic infernos out of their asses? Everything was thought to be a commie conspiracy.
Is this happening again, but now we are instead fearing the Chinese?
I have a bad feeling about this...
If everyone who visits China buys a new cellphone and laptop for the trip...
Where were those cellphones and laptops likely manufactured? China...
China stands to make quite a profit from people doing this.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
and yet we have everything built in China for sale in the US (iPhones, Lenovo, etc).
It's pretty hard to bug something at manufacturing time, since you usually don't have a clue as to who it's being shipped to. It can be done, but odds are you'll end up bugging a lot of 19 year old teenage girls going off to college instead of corporate execs.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Maybe I'm taking this a little personally because I'm an IT guy. I dunno. But I do know I'd rather not work in IT for a large, tech-based company where the CTO is quoted publicly as saying: "I don't let my IT department near my laptop".
Anybody else have a WTF moment when they saw that? Or is it only me?
Since in the US they'll take your phone and laptop, MP3 player and any other good stuff and demand to see your company documents if they think there's something nice in there.
PS the US has used Echelon to get Boeing a european contract by finding out the figure they had to bit under to get the contract.
This didn't require a cell phone either, so throwing away your cellphone isn't necessary there either.
So much nicer being spied on by the US government. You don't have to buy new kit all the time, just accept the espionage.
As a non-American citizen I feel the reverse holds true. When I enter the USA from Canada I should bring a seperate bare-bones, no thrills cell phone and an empty laptop. Because if the TSA decides that they want to snoop through my electronics there is no telling what information they are pulling out, government created spyware being installed, or some sort of magical chip that transmits everything I am doing back to them.
See, Conspiracy theories work both ways... No more fear mongering, okay? Lets play nice kids.
This is very good advice, as it would instantly catch the loss of weight if any data was stolen from the laptop. You hear of data theft all the time, and all it takes is something low-tech like a scale to detect it.
They just stop listening to the teenage girls and when they hear a corporate exec talking, note the number and keep a watch on it.
It's not like they don't have a lot of people to listen in on conversations on each new phone until they work out whether there's anything juicy going on on it.
I find this disturbing, very disturbing coming from the likes of "Mark Bregman, chief technology officer at security firm Symantec". This is one person that should know better. It's the kind of above the rules attitude that is far to prevalent in executives and that makes them so valuable for corporate espionage in the first place. Someone like Mr Bregman should know better and needs to have someone slap his hand and reign him in, even if it takes the board of directors to do it.
Policies are there for a reason Mr Bregman, it's to protect companies like yours from people like you and those that would exploit your naivety in a heartbeat. The higher in your organization you are, the more valuable you are as a target and the more rigorous your security practices need to be.
I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. Itâ(TM)s the only way to be sure.
Aka profiling.
Weigh your laptop before and after you enter and leave the country... to do what? How are you going to detect a 15g to 100g logging circuit that's more than likely (if there was malicious espionage intent) designed to fit or mount into current hardware and not be detected on a scale that's accurate down to 0.5 pounds. My point, you're not. I'm not ignorant to the fact that something as compact and sealed as a Mac Airbook or alike would take some real damn EE talent to pull something off but it's nice that ITFA they choose to have a separate laptop for overseas verses state side and re-images it when they leave. Just hope they practice good VPN security measures at their companies...
"I don't let my IT department near my laptop,"
Should you trust an security company where the executives ignore their own IT security policies?
Assuming the cell phone stays in your possession, why are phones so insecure that the software can be modified presumably through the network? If all phones are so bad, there must be state sponsored hooks to do anything to the phone. Do any cell phones support secure firmware loads? I guess the Sectera Edge is out of the question for your average traveler.
Nationalism is as much of a correlation as racism, since the cause of all of this is paranoia.
Weigh our laptops? Exactly how much does a 1 weigh? a 0 weigh? If I create some new data and delete old data, will my laptop weigh less? Or more? How much more does a 200k keylogger weigh?
Seriously, this is silly, because TFA is talking about re-imaging laptops before/after. That would imply malware/spyware being surreptitiously installed, but that won't change the weight directly.
Re-imaging the laptop if a hardware keylogger has been installed wouldn't have any effect either (but could possibly be detected by weighing).
There's ABSOLUTELY NO WAY AROUND IT
At the risk of being slightly OT, I'm thinking about several comments noting that these systems were made in China to begin with, so it got me thinking.
If a ridiculous set of circumstances arose where certain organizations banned the use of computers "made in China", is it possible to obtain/assemble a system that's "made in the USA"? Or "made in <NATO_member>"?
I'm just wondering if there's a way to source all the parts domestically and what it would cost. I'm guessing the answer is "impossible", but I'm curious if anyone knows about it.
One of our employees brought back unwanted additions to his laptop from China. This precaution is really smart. Although the Chinese will probably start to simply remove something from the laptop to make weights match.
From Northern Europe and anonymous for obvious reasons.
But what if they're using a Chinese font?
This is not the sig you're looking for.
We also want your Poutine!
The Han race is china is the communist party. There used to be dozens of other races inside china, most of them are now extinct.
So China is the US of A's biggest trading partner, and the biggest suspect for corporate espionage too.
Why would you trade with someone you suspect so much? Because you don't have a choice. So what are we complaining about?
Nice to see the US doing their bit for positive International relations as usual.
Oh wait....
The problem with throwing away your cellphone that's been to China: thirty minutes later you feel like throwing away your cellphone again.
Proverbs 21:19
Does it strike anyone else as just a bit ironic that the CTO of a company whose business is plugging the holes in Windows and repairing the damage when there are leaks chooses to use a Mac instead of a PC?
I weighed my laptop before and after I installed malware as a test. The weights are the same. I don't think the scales had the resolution necessary to measure the extra bits:)
This is ridiculous stuff. What makes them think that the Chinese are out to get them?
We're talking about top corporate executives in a competitive marketplace. What about your domestic competitors? What about other countries? There are far more likely enemies than the Chinese and you can bet that some of those enemies actually are spying on you. Could be Germans, could be Israelis, could be Brazilians.
Bugging computers is pretty straightforward and even 3rd world countries have the technology to do this nowadays.
How are you going to detect a 15g to 100g logging circuit that's more than likely (if there was malicious espionage intent) designed to fit or mount into current hardware and not be detected on a scale that's accurate down to 0.5 pounds.
Here's a long shot... how about using a postal scale that's accurate down to a gramme? Do you think there might be one in the mailroom?
At Blackhat, I once met with a Chinese guy who said he works for Symantec as a security engineer. Some Chinese security researchers said they know *now* how to hack a Website operated by Symantec , but have not done it yet.
we already know of cases where China has broken into hotel rooms, stollen blackberry's, etc.
Any link that supports your claims?
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
If anything, the Chinese already know more about how to make our products than we do. After all, they built them.
I work at a huge, universally hated TLA in the U.S. The next time someone tells me the way we do things is lousy because complete idiots at the highest level must have set up our business processes and private industry would never do anything that stupid - I'll have another good counter-example.
Thanks. I really appreciate the insight.
Are you kidding? The US basically gave away the entire manufacturing sector to china, gratis, brought them a century ahead in wealth and technology in just 20 years. We rebuilt germany and japan after we defeated them in wars, partially because we helped russia so much during that war and they became belligerent towards us just because they felt like it, they were jerks to us.. And so on. We've been the most generous to other people nation ever, all we ask is don't screw with us, and even then, we still get shafted. If anything we aren't nearly enough nationalistic and protectionist. We are now on the ropes economically from this misguided policy. It was stupid and pushed by a small number of ultrarich and traitorous globalist fatcats to make profits, that's it.
I'm all for having the US turn a little more turtle, stop exporting tech, throw the big smackdown on those wallstreet pirates, rebuild our own manufacturing, get 100% energy independent so we aren't exporting cash to nations that don't like us, stop all our lame corporate military expansion that has nothing to do with self defense and everything to do with, again, making wall street profits and stop supporting that racist and fascist loon little Mediterranean nation, and just be done with it.
Get rid of harmful foreign entanglements, it always goes sour and turns into a big fat mess.
That sounds like a derivation of the original story which was how the Russians got samples of the alloys the British were using in their early turbojet engines.
Why not? They've already done that in our pet food & baby toys.
Now, that's funny. Thanks. I needed a laugh this afternoon.
do not buy US network equipment with a processor in it, or other complex hardware.
Nobody can proof that they did not include a trojan bootloader.
it sits and waits for a command what to report. The code of it hidden in hardware or dirty programming.
the command hidden in traffic from and to search-engines. ( wasnt there a hint that in Google backoffice DHS & NSA sits? )
And blackberry is well know of telephonmig home!
1) diff your HDD (hard and time consuming)
You also need to DIFF the BIOS on your motherboard.
And DIFF the microcode in your CPU.
And DIFF the EEPROM on all your PCI cards.
And on and on and on...
BONUS PROBLEM: Describe an algorithm which can be run within the confines of an operation system so as to determine whether the operating system is running directly on metal or is running within an emulation environment that is running directly on metal [or is running within an emulation environment that is running within an emulation environment that is running directly on metal, or...].
is why you are carrying sensitive information across an international border?
"Traveling light" is good advice for anyone headed abroad.
But perhaps especially so for the geek whose more incendiary political rants, porn stash or internal corporate memos aren't as well secured as he thinks.
This, friends, is the real reason behind the famed Apple design of no user serviceable parts. Not to save weight, not to give Apple a few measly bucks for battery replacements but to prevent FOREIGN ESPIONAGE. Think about that that when you drop your Dell and 12 little plastic panels pop off.
Best of all you'll WANT to throw away your Apple device and buy a new one after just a few days of frustrating use. That is if it's not already scratched itself or cracked.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
ur thinking of Russians pirating the first jet engines from the British, so the /soft sole story/ is a ripoff :)
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