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We purchased a machine from China and it came with malware preinstalled

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Re: We purchased a machine from China and it came with malware preinstalled

#141

Post by tablespoon »

rafale wrote: post #126
JediPig wrote: post #110

20 years ago, china hide 2nd network card that was in listener mode, transmitting documents at random times, mostly peek. This was at a research company. How it was discovered. We put a card on listening/prem mode and mirror everything for that subnet the printer was on. I thought I screwed it up with the double mirror/traffic. when investigating why the issue, we found nothing wrong with the config, only when we plu…

Why was the printer connected to the public internet? A DMZ subnet would have prevented this vector of attack.

>> 20 years ago, china hide 2nd network card that was in listener mode, transmitting documents at random times, mostly peek. This was at a research company.

> Why was the printer connected to the public internet? A DMZ subnet would have prevented this vector of attack.

Aren't most network printers connected to office networks with public internet access? I sounds like this printer was making outgoing connections, and I doubt many people/companies go through the trouble of specially blocking those from printers.

You'd have to be especially security conscious and paranoid (especially 20 years ago!), to be operating under the assumption that your own equipment is working against you.

Re: We purchased a machine from China and it came with malware preinstalled

#142

Post by raverbashing »

gruez wrote: post #82
raverbashing wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it's just malware that's "around" the company since nobody cares what they download, which USB keys they plug, etc Autorun USB malware is very common

>Autorun USB malware is very common that hasn't worked since windows xp sp2.

Doesn't mean machines with malware won't save files to attached USB drives

Re: We purchased a machine from China and it came with malware preinstalled

#143

Post by someperson »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #133
rafale wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying from China, as a westerner, is akin to buying the rope that will hang you. Regardless of the quality or price of their products. We should have never allowed them to become this powerful. Their ideology is toxic and incompatible with ours.

> We should have never allowed them What does this mean?

I think the person you're replying to meant that China should not have been allowed to join the World Trade Organisation without further requirements.

Re: We purchased a machine from China and it came with malware preinstalled

#144

Post by tim333 »

suifbwish wrote: post #123
geysersam wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot possibly blame the Chinese government or the people for the Corona virus. That's just insane. Granted, the official response wasn't good. But a virus pandemic was ever only a question of time. It's unlikely it could have been prevented wherever it had started.

Sure we can blame them. They tried to cover it up in the beginning. It would be insane NOT to blame them for that. It’s also been debunked that the virus came from a wet market.

It's still a bit of an open question on the wet market.

Re: We purchased a machine from China and it came with malware preinstalled

#145

Post by briffle »

rafale wrote: post #126
JediPig wrote: post #110

20 years ago, china hide 2nd network card that was in listener mode, transmitting documents at random times, mostly peek. This was at a research company. How it was discovered. We put a card on listening/prem mode and mirror everything for that subnet the printer was on. I thought I screwed it up with the double mirror/traffic. when investigating why the issue, we found nothing wrong with the config, only when we plu…

Why was the printer connected to the public internet? A DMZ subnet would have prevented this vector of attack.

I don't think I have ever seen a major US office building where the printers were on an isolated network. They are usually on the same network as the workstations, but sometimes on the server network, so the print server can connect directly to them.

And to be honest, (I have been out of it for a few years now) I have yet to see a company block OUTGOING access on a DMZ.

Re: We purchased a machine from China and it came with malware preinstalled

#146

Post by io98763 »

danieltanfh95 wrote: post #114
3pt14159 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what? I don't care anymore. When this type of thing happens it's almost always China. Whether it's intentional malware or a lack of QA, how could one tell? They have such a reputation for both I don't know why we still let their electronics into our countries.

it's because chinese goods are consistently good that anything bad is news. ironic isn't it literally everything is made in china, if the quality is as bad as you say the world would have fallen apart. It seems critical thinking is rare among news outrage these days. The same comments were said of Japanese products back in the day, "IP thieves", "shitty quality", and here we are decades later praising Japanese produc…

I don't recall the Japanese being accused of poor quality. Just imitating rather than innovating. Many Japanese products like swords, knives, cameras, have been known for surprisingly high quality for a long time. Centuries in some cases.

I'd say Chinese manufacturing is a little cheaper and a lot lower quality, and generally the price difference is not remotely sufficient to make up for the loss in performance. You need a company in the middle who cares about their reputation to be safe buying it.

Re: We purchased a machine from China and it came with malware preinstalled

#147

Post by sbate1987 »

gruez wrote: post #73
reaperducer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's the reason why I don't buy Chinese crap anymore. I'm not saying that I don't buy anything made in China, almost everything is made in China, but everyone should avoid Chinese crapware. This is one of the big reasons that Apple locked down its Lightning/USB ports so hard. There were tons of fake Apple chargers flooding the market that contained exfiltration circuitry, among other problems. It was a huge topic i…

>There were tons of fake Apple chargers flooding the market that contained exfiltration circuitry, among other problems. It was a huge topic in tech circles, and on HN, at the time. source? I've heard of fake charges being planted with exfiltration circuitry as part of a targeted attack (eg. by red teams or actual bad guys), but I haven't heard of aliexpress vendors shipping them out en-masse.

No post body was provided.

Re: We purchased a machine from China and it came with malware preinstalled

#149

Post by tiahura »

rafale wrote: post #139
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should have never allowed them What does this mean?

Trade ban and sanctions in the early 2000s when it should have become clear their ambition and dirty tactics would put us on a collision course. Instead, we were blinded by the cheap cost and outsourced everything there. To a country that doesn't respect IP, or even basic human rights, and, on top of that, is now ready and able to export their world vision and order. Now it's a bit too late to stop them. NATO/West id…

Early 2000’s?

Here’s Joe Biden in 2011 fawning over King Xi and calling for a rising China.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CQaBdlu4rL4

Re: We purchased a machine from China and it came with malware preinstalled

#150

Post by happytiger »

yorwba wrote: post #76
starfallg wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm not saying that I don't buy anything made in China, almost everything is made in China, but everyone should avoid Chinese crapware. If you spend just a small bit of effort, you can look for items not made in China. They are usually higher quality. Japanese companies (and increasingly large American ones) are moving / have moved their production elsewhere due to an increasingly hostile business environment in Chi…

If you buy a Sony product made in Thailand, what protects you from encountering crap like in the article is not that it's made in Thailand instead of China, but that Sony has a reputation to protect and the expertise to do proper quality control. If you buy stuff directly from a Thai company that you never heard of before just because their product was the cheapest, you'll have to do your own testing and will likely…

A lot of Chinese company owners have moved production to Vietnam, Thailand. Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, etc., specifically because they are aware of this changing preference in the West. Chinese owned business is not China-based business, but most Chinese-owned businesses are subject to CCP influences.

As you pointed out: manufacturing standards vary factory to factory and region to region, and quality issues abound in newer manufacturing regions that lack the crazy competitive environment China has (a thousand pots et al).

Counterfeit PPE really revealed a lot about boys these factories operate. Very hard to verify ownership reliably.

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