And Now the Manchurian Microchip

[Zguy28]

And Now the Manchurian Microchip

http://www.dailyartisan.com/news/and-now-the-manchurian-microchip/

The geniuses at Homeland Security who brought you hare-brained procedures at airports (which inconvenience travelers without snagging terrorists) have decreed that October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. This means The Investigator — at the risk of compromising national insecurities — would be remiss not to make you aware of the hottest topic in U.S. counterintelligence circles: rogue microchips. This threat emanates from China (PRC) — and it is hugely significant.

The myth: Chinese intelligence services have concealed a microchip in every computer everywhere, programmed to “call home” if and when activated.

The reality: It may actually be true.

All computers on the market today — be they Dell, Toshiba, Sony, Apple or especially IBM — are assembled with components manufactured inside the PRC. Each component produced by the Chinese, according to a reliable source within the intelligence community, is secretly equipped with a hidden microchip that can be activated any time by China’s military intelligence services, the PLA.

“It is there, deep inside your computer, if they decide to call it up,” the security chief of a multinational corporation told The Investigator. “It is capable of providing Chinese intelligence with everything stored on your system — on everyone’s system — from e- mail to documents. I call it Call Home Technology. It doesn’t mean to say they’re sucking data from everyone’s computer today, it means the Chinese think ahead — and they now have the potential to do it when it suits their purposes.”

Discussed theoretically in high-tech security circles as “Trojan Horse on a Chip” or “The Manchurian Chip,” Call Home Technology came to light after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched a security program in December 2007 called Trust in Integrated Circuits. DARPA awarded almost $25 million in contracts to six companies and university research labs to test foreign-made microchips for hardware Trojans, back doors and kill switches — techie-speak for bugs and gremlins — with a view toward microchip verification.

Raytheon, a defense contractor, was granted almost half of these funds for hardware and software testing.

Its findings, which are classified, have apparently sent shockwaves through the counterintelligence community.

See link for full article...

[PeterMP]

Wouldn't shock me.

[Titaw]

I can't believe this was released to the public.

[Koolblue13]

Maybe we can allow the Taliban to start manufacturing all the things we need.

It would help them out, so maybe they aren't so angry with us and will become dependent on our economy and I bet they work dirt cheap.

[SkinInsite]

The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.

[#98QBKiller]

Another good reason to have your PC custom-built by a computer nerd.

[Titaw]

Another good reason to have your PC custom-built by a computer nerd.

The sad thing is that even if you have it custom built by a computer nerd the chip is still in the computer because the nerd won't put together the boards. He'll buy them and they will still have the chip in them.

[MurrayH81]

The Chinese government is not a friend to anyone other than themselves. Any other supposition is delusional.

[#98QBKiller]

The sad thing is that even if you have it custom built by a computer nerd the chip is still in the computer because the nerd won't put together the boards. He'll buy them and they will still have the chip in them.

Well we're all ****ed now...are there any truly American-made computers?

[FanboyOf91]

Install Linux.

Problem solved.

[PokerPacker]

Install Linux.

Problem solved.

sweet, I'm already one step ahead!

[PeterMP]

Install Linux.

Problem solved.

How does that solve the problem?

Your linux computer can't access the internet?

[BigRedskinDaddy]

Whew. Glad I'm still using my Commodore 64 -- I don't think the PRC was mass-producing motherboards back then.

I'm safe.

[Koolblue13]

At what point do we stop considering China an ally?

[Zguy28]

Install Linux.

Problem solved.

Fail.

The key to unlocking computer secrets through rogue microchips is uncovering (or stealing) source codes, without which such microchips would be useless. This is why Chinese espionage is so heavily focused upon the U.S. computer industry.

Four main computer operating systems exist. Two of them, Unix and Linux, utilize open-source codes. Apple’s operating system is Unix- based.

Which leaves only Microsoft as the source code worth cracking. But in early 2004, Microsoft announced that its security had been breached and that its source code was “lost or stolen.”

“As technology evolves, each new program has a new source code,” a computer forensics expert told The Investigator. “So the Chinese would need ongoing access to new Microsoft source codes for maintaining their ability to activate any microchips they may have installed, along with the expertise to utilize new hardware technology.”

[stevenaa]

How does that solve the problem?

Your linux computer can't access the internet?

That is but one expample of how ridiculous the cult following is for a technology where most users are really clueless about the validity of security claims made by Linux worshippers. Not a Linux bash. Just funny. OS makes no difference to what the chip could be doing.

[alexey]

This seems very cool but highly unlikely. Microchips operate at a very low level of the whole thing. They transform inputs into outputs... I am having a hard time imagining how they would gather data, initiate transmissions, etc.

[jpillian]

Ken Thompson (won the Turing award in 1984 for the work he did with Unix) did a very interesting talk on this sort of thing back in 1984, and it was captured in a paper entitled "Reflections on Trusting Trust". More or less, he modified the C compiler so that a backdoor inserted into a program's byte code would not be detectable by simply reviewing the source code. This sort of thing would be very difficult to detect.

I think the pertinent quote is: "In demonstrating the possibility of this kind of attack, I picked on the C compiler. I could have picked on any program-handling program such as an assembler, a loader, or even hardware microcode. As the level of program gets lower, these bugs will be harder and harder to detect. A well installed microcode bug will be almost impossible to detect."