Dell Ships Infected Motherboards

An anonymous reader writes "Computer maker Dell is warning that some of its server motherboards have been delivered to customers carrying an unwanted extra: computer malware. It could be confirmation that the 'hardware trojans' long posited by some security experts are indeed a real threat."

Comments

It's not a hardware trojan

[lseltzer]

It's firmware, meaning software in a ROM. It's only slightly unconventional.

And they say it's only on motherboards sent out as replacements. Interesting, you would think this would make it fairly easy to identify the source.

What did you expect?

[Chas]

Basically the entire computer's assembled in a sweatshop by barely literate people who are being paid jack-shit to assemble a "rich-boy toy" for some perceived fat cat in the US who sleeps on piles of money.

How the hell would they know if someone decided to pull a dick move like this?
And for what they're being *COUGH*paid*COUGH*, why the hell would they even care?

Re:What did you expect?

[Elbowgeek]

You do raise a good point. *We* the consumer have demanded the cheap prices of the hardware we buy, thus squeezing the profit margins of companies like Dell. Thus Dell is forced to outsource their firmware development and manufacture to China with too little oversight, leaving greater opportunity for exploitation by those with malicious intent.

Re:What did you expect?

[Waffle Iron]

The next time a WalMart shopper complains about job outsourcing, offer to show them the cause of the problem and hand them a mirror.

The problem is that the "global free market" is a multi-player version of the Prisoner's Dilemma game. It's been proven that in absence of communication between the players, the rational choice in this game is to always "defect". In this case, it means buying cheap imported crap at Wal Mart. If you don't defect, most others continue to do so, and you just end up being a sucker.

Complaining about individuals' choices is going to accomplish nothing, because they're all making the most rational individual decisions. The only way to change the situation is to include the external costs of cheap offshore production into the retail price, which alters the individual's most rational choice. The most obvious way to do that is slap a tariff on the goods.

Re:why spend millions when you can spend billions?

[roman_mir]

Ken Thompson would show you how you'd fail in this anyway. You'd THINK you flashed the chips, but there would be some other code somewhere in the chip that would contain a Trojan. Unless you are in the loop 100% of the time and nobody can inject any modifications into any manufacturing processes, you can't be certain that nothing at all was modified.