March 13,
2008: In the United States, the FBI has got a scary new problem on their hands.
It's the increasing sale of counterfeit computer equipment to military
organizations. But it's not the selling of cheap knock offs at premium prices
that worries, the feds, but the espionage potential of this sort of thing. The
most vulnerable equipment is network cards. Crooks buy cheap, generic ones from
China, then attach authentic looking stickers to make it appear like a
top-of-the line item from an American supplier. The intel angle enters the
equation when you realize that these cards could have special versions of chips
that are hard wired to either allow foreign hackers access to U.S. networks, or
"call home" to enable the foreign Cyber Warriors to know where their fake cards
have ended up.
There have
been plenty of counterfeit cards uncovered, but none yet with the spy chips
installed. What's worrisome is that U.S. Cyber War units have apparently
already created such spy chips, as these can be installed in legit equipment as
well. All you have to do is get the target country to accept the gear and
install it. Normally, and for obvious reasons, no one wants to talks about this
sort of thing. But the growing number of counterfeit electronics being peddled
to the U.S. military, and energetic FBI efforts to catch the counterfeiters,
has made it more difficult to keep this form of espionage completely under
wraps.
