White House’s Cyberspace Policy Review<\/a>:<\/p>\n\u201c[In the review] is a small acknowledgment that the Executive Branch knows something weird is happening in imported tech:<\/p>\n
‘The emergence of new centers for manufacturing, design, and research across the globe raises concerns about the potential for easier subversion of computers and networks through subtle hardware or software manipulations. Counterfeit products have created the most visible supply problems, but few documented examples exist of unambiguous, deliberate subversions…The challenge with supply chain attacks is that a sophisticated adversary might narrowly focus on particular systems and make manipulation virtually impossible to discover.<\/strong>Foreign manufacturing does present easier opportunities for nation-state adversaries to subvert products; however, the same goals could be achieved through the recruitment of key insiders or other espionage activities.’ [Emphasis added]\u201d<\/p>\nDon\u2019t Panic!<\/strong><\/h2>\nAs disturbingly eerie as this information certainly is, it begs the question: what can we do about it? The answer is readily available. Nothing, at least not as single consumers or even as IT\/IS Managers. Some might decide to throw out all their devices and in a Walden<\/em> <\/em>moment, return to nature, resorting to carrier pigeons and smoke signals to communicate with the outside world; but most of us recognize that technology owns us now, and for good or for bad, better or worse, we like it. Heck, we love it! We refuse to reject technology because, well, how could we? It makes our lives easier. It makes our lives better, at least if you believe the mantras of GE (We Bring Good Things to Life) and LG (Life\u2019s Good).<\/p>\nConspiracy Theory<\/strong><\/h2>\nAssume for a moment that the White House and other governments know far more than they\u2019re saying (not a leap at all). Then assume that detecting and removing these hard-coded security risks not only represents a huge difficulty, but rather a virtual impossibility (not a stretch). Now imagine that the threats represented by this built-in malware could be a mixture of state-sponsored and\/or private interests \u2013 some in it for innocuous concepts like \u2018national security\u2019 and some in it for more tangible returns like money. Finally, imagine if the whole truth got out \u2013 how it would create such a panic that Greece\u2019s finances would seem rock-solid next to what was left of the global economy. No wonder Schaffer took so long to answer.<\/p>\n
As much as it sounds like the stuff that Hollywood is made of, the truth is in there somewhere. If so, then (for all you Star Trek fans) like the Borg, this new threat is lurking and waiting, ready to pounce and assimilate your information, and there\u2019s not a darned thing you \u2013 or anyone else \u2013 can do about it. Come to think of it, spam is<\/em> the equivalent of the Borg \u2013 maybe even a progenitor of the 24th Century race.<\/p>\nI think I\u2019m going to avoid the rush and post all my personal information on Twitter. I hate waiting.<\/p>\n
<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spam-ready tablets off the shelves? Zombie PCs out of the box? Testifying before U.S. Congress this week, a top official for the Department of Homeland… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[11,9,10,8,7],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","category-spam","tag-allspammedup","tag-bot","tag-botnet","tag-malware","tag-spam","jsn-master"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1850,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions\/1850"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/strong><\/p>\n