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Best Practice: Travel Light To China
Hugh Pickens writes "What may once have sounded like the behavior of a raving paranoid is now considered standard operating procedure for officials at American government agencies, research groups and companies as the NY Times reports how businesses sending representatives to China give them a loaner laptop and cellphone that they wipe clean before they leave and wipe again when they return. 'If a company has significant intellectual property that the Chinese and Russians are interested in, and you go over there with mobile devices, your devices will get penetrated,' says Joel F. Brenner, formerly the top counterintelligence official in the office of the director of national intelligence. The scope of the problem is illustrated by an incident at the United States Chamber of Commerce in 2010 when the chamber learned that servers in China were stealing information from four of its Asia policy experts who frequently visited China. After their trips, even the office printer and a thermostat in one of the chamber's corporate offices were communicating with an internet address in China. The chamber did not disclose how hackers had infiltrated its systems, but its first step after the attack was to bar employees from taking devices with them 'to certain countries,' notably China. 'Everybody knows that if you are doing business in China, in the 21st century, you don't bring anything with you,' says Jacob Olcott, a cybersecurity expert at Good Harbor Consulting. 'That's "Business 101" — at least it should be.'"
If you travel to China, this is old news.
Yes, some businesses are beginning to require wiped travel laptops for entering the US. I have to say that I do not know anyone personally who has had laptop issues at the US border (although I know that there are some people who are on some sort of list and have them frequently). The assumption is, if you go to China, you will probably be hacked, and it's not going to happen at Customs.
By the way, in my experience Chinese firms are incredibly paranoid about this, much more so than US firms. I suspect that paranoia has some justification.
Or anywhere in the world.
General rule of thumb when traveling is to always travel light and poor. The more valuable things you bring with you the more liability that you are lugging around, which may be stolen, confiscated, or make you prime bate to be kidnapped.
Sure you may be street smart enough in your area to see the difference between a criminal and an honest folk, but in a different culture you are green all over again, and prime bate. Even if you are going across the US. In the country and need assistance often you can get help from those guys walking down the street with large riffles in hand (as they are probably just hunting) for those who live in the country these people are not threatening they are just out having a good time. In the City you should avoid the guy walking down the street with a riffle.
Or up in the Northeast, People usually go straight to business with less pleasantries, down south there is more talk and gentlemen behavior. For a Northern folk if someone comes up to you and starts talking all friendly like, you get warning bells that this guys is trying to distract you. If down south someone gets straight to business this guy is just being rude and hiding information so you shouldn't trust him.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Yep this is a point on which it is fair to say that America is no better.
The only safe way to take devices there is to wipe your devices clean (an uncertain and damaging act on flash storage) and carry a hard drive with a deniable hidden encrypted partition (including duress key to unlock a decoy partition) containing backups of the devices. Or store the backup online (connecting with an anti-MITM system and using proper encryption of course, that means ONLY YOU have the key and there is no "recovery" option) if you have a shit-ton of bandwidth and time.
Even then they may take your hardware and do who-knows-what to it, as happened to Moxie Marlinspike's phone. Or you may just not get it back at all.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Yep this is a point on which it is fair to say that America is no better.
I'm not sure I'd agree with that. /. readers).
This is a case of them planting trojans on your equipment in China, then exercising that, when you get back to the US.
In the US, this can be (and I'm sure, is) done by folk like the CIA and NSA. However, folks like me don't do it. Foreigners can come to my office, exchange files and information, use my network, and even use my USB fobs with no worries that I'll plant spyware on their machines (I am quite capable of doing so, as, I'm sure, are a significant number of
To have it so prevalent in a nation is a serious, serious indictment. The NSA does not come to my office and demand that I arbitrarily plant trojans on our partners' and customers' machines. If they did, I would fight them fang, tooth and claw.
What is happening in China is very dangerous. Not just for us, but also for the Chinese. They may think they have this tiger by the tail, but they will really be shocked when it turns around and bites them.
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
-H. L. Mencken
If down south someone gets straight to business this guy is just being rude and hiding information so you shouldn't trust him.
I spent a year in the south in the 90s and the reason is people see themselves as instruments of tradition. Historically mobility was low in the south, so a simple business transaction well become a lifetime economic marriage, so there's lots of courting going on. Your GGGgrandpa and his GGGgrandpa probably served in the same civil war regiment, and in fact there probably is a distant genealogically tenuous connection between you two assuming you're genuine southern natives. If nothing bad happens, your kids might very well be expected to continue the business transaction. Also there exists a massive gossip network such that you can assume everyone is all into your business, so if they truly don't know you, they will be mystified as to what you're up to simply due to curiosity. I heard some hilarious jokes that probably only make sense in the rural south about old forgetful people simply relying on their gossip hound neighbors to remind them of stuff, like a human peer to peer network. In the go go go north economic transactions are more of a one night stand or fling at most, so no one cares what church if any you attend, or what military unit you or your GGGgreatgrandpa served in. Its an article of faith amongst the southerners I knew that tradition and reputation (both individual and familial) are extremely valuable, they believe in that about as much as their church, more or less.
Northern business transactions are like a single hand of poker. Southern business transactions are like a multigenerational game of chess or Go. Before you freak out, obviously these stereotypes are only about 75% accurate.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The Chinese "middle class" surpassed the population of the entire United States or Europe several years ago. Sure, that still leaves roughly a billion poor people, but with nearly a half-billion doing well, they have some serious internal market power. This also bodes well for political change within China.... a half-billion people with iPhones (or clones) and cars are going to start asking why they don't have more control over their lives at some point.
Of course, with twice as many people stuck in rural poverty while seeing a growing bourgeoisie, there's another potential road to political change....