I'd never understood this kind of nationalism. I don't care if the items I purchase happen to have been made in the country I happen to live. I want to buy the product that best suits my needs regardless of where it was manufactured.
Sure, if an American product happens to have a higher quality and I'm looking for that, then I can choose to buy it. In that case you can abstract away the manufacturing country, so "made in country X" shouldn't be a factor in any case.
If anything, Western people should buy products from poor countries. It's the best aid they can get.
I know here in Canada on investigative consumer shows it's been shown "made in" may simply mean a product was assembled from parts made in another country or maybe 51% of the product was made in your country.
Preying on a person's nationalistic feelings is a powerful marketing tool to get people to buy a product.
A British spy agency coming out with information like this but not in public? Sounds like bullshit to me.
Britain would be well advised to steer clear of US branded computers as the NSA might have access.
Lenovo laptops are also among the only ones that are supported by coreboot.
You can't be sure you've found all the backdoors but by running coreboot+linux you can eliminate many of them.
Perhaps that's the reason the US Government is spreading FUD about Lenovo.
Might?
Anyone recall how the USG was requiring backdoors into all routers/switches? I was told about this in 1997 from a Cisco employee who told me they were required to provide a method for the USG to be able to log into all devices they make.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios-xml/ios/sec_usr_cfg/conf...
If I had the choice between communicating over CALEA-compliant or non-CALEA-compliant infrastructure, I would far prefer the latter, but these particular backdoors aren't required to operate in an automatic, unattended, or surreptitious way (though some implementations might well have bugs that allow them to do so).
Why wouldn't they want to warn citizens and businesses about this?
The ban [on Lenovo hardware for classified networks by multiple western intel agencies] was introduced in the mid-2000s after intensive laboratory testing of its equipment allegedly documented “back-door” hardware and “firmware” vulnerabilities in Lenovo chips.
There are six countries mentioned - China, US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.
Do each of those know the actual exploits, or do they just know that exploits exist and to not use these computers?
Assuming they all know, that's a lot of people who can have scary access to Lenovos. I'd be interested to see if that's going to affect the generally good image Lenovo had. My old thinkpad has a bunch of nice security stuff. I still think it's the most secure computer I use, certainly more tamper proof than most other machines I use.
Very little information about the actual details in the article. If really was a backdoor there and publicly banning a company because of that, wouldn't it make more sense to show the results publicly too? Otherwise it feels more like FUD than responsible research.
Its speculation and posturing until there is evidence.
It sounds more like someone is not happy they're not in control of the hardware.
It's sad to admit, but I would be more suspecting of an American computer than a Chinese one at this point. Constantly pointing their fingers and everyone else so they can do the same things when everyone has their back turned.
... hahahaha, yeah right.
I haven't let it talk to a network or much USB yet, so I'm hoping it's still secure.
The slogan is "Designed by Apple in California." The new MacPro will be able to add 'Assembled in the US' if they wish, and I expect that they will.
It's still all made in China, but flag wavers get to ignore that. Apple is not the only company that does this.
The actual risk is in infrastructure, stuff like Huawei routers or telephone backends, most of which today are a fully functional computer on their own, with generally no access for the end consumer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRxDvkKBMTc
http://www.slideshare.net/endrazine/defcon-hardware-backdoor...
[1] http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57482813-83/expert-huawei-r...
And I am willing to bet there is a way to take a circuit "fingerprint"
Just look at what has come to light with the PRISM program. They already have access to the major software companies what makes people think they havent done some secret FISA order to Dell/Cisco/HP/Apple etc.
edit: typo
What is? Anyone got any information?
Most UK govt/corporate types I see have Thinkpads and and a Civil Service Blackberry but they are not covert.
