The “proper malware analysis” had me cracking up. I really hope they didn’t pay any significant amount of money for that.
We purchased a machine from China and it came with malware preinstalled
81–90 of 342 posts
Re: We purchased a machine from China and it came with malware preinstalled
#82Given that Windows 7 _Ultimate_ was installed on what is essentially an OEM machine, it's very likely that it's a pirated copy with a "home brewed" license key. I think the most reasonable explanation is that either the OS was sourced already infected, or the crack tool they used was infected.
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.
Re: We purchased a machine from China and it came with malware preinstalled
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quoted post unavailable.
> "efficient" MBA eloi outsourced everything to morlocks a long time ago. This is the biggest weakness of the West - and it all stems back to "share holder value". Companies, US ones, in particular, seem to have some absurd drive to pay endless dividends to shareholders, and drive 'value' via share price, by appearing to be profitable. In other words, get stuff from the cheapest provider. It didn't help that at the s…
Yup, and it's even more directed than that.
Western MBAs and politicians think they know that manufacturing is just a fungible commodity and think that we're exploiting cheap Chinese labor to 'drive shareholder value'.
While they have this myopic focus on quarterly results, the CCP has a 100- and 500-year plan, and is happily exploiting that myopia for strategic economic and military value, including subsidizing massive undercutting of entire industries in order to kill all but their own. The result is that they are gaining the deep know-how of manufacturing, the ability to compromise their adversaries' military gear at the component level, and the ability to choke off supply chains.
Although there is still barely time to repair this, it will go down as a strategic blunder of historic proportions.
Re: We purchased a machine from China and it came with malware preinstalled
#84"The malware would collect user data and send it to a remote address." unpopular question, but how is this any different than mistakenly forgetting to disclose 'telemetry' in your code? or backdoors that routinely get disclosed in US embedded hardware products like firewalls and routers? or Discord scanning your entire hard disk? Ill admit the product seems pretty poorly designed from the get-go, but the tactics at w…
It’s marked as a “Trojan/backdoor”, meaning remote access tool, and it tries to spread itself by inserting files to any USB stick inserted into the computer.
Giving someone full remote control over a computer and trying to spread that control as a computer virus is nothing like anonymous analytics collection.
Re: We purchased a machine from China and it came with malware preinstalled
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Surely buyers can't possibly afford sending everything back. What country you live in with so poor online protections you can't return things within the return window without incurring extra costs for doing so? Sounds broken.
Return shipping is usually up to the customer and shipping back to China is much more expensive than the initial China to the US charges. Sometimes it exceeds the cost of the item itself to try to send it back so it's just cheaper to eat the loss.
> Return shipping is usually up to the customer
Not for orders from Amazon or Wal Mart, the two biggest places you'd tend to buy cheap Chinese products from.
Re: We purchased a machine from China and it came with malware preinstalled
#86Hug of death probably so I cannot read the article. Anyway 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. If something doesn't match the description send it back, if you find random executables that you cannot identify send it back, if you are asked to register on some weird…
>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…
Why are you being downvoted? Avoiding chinese products is a good thing. Thanks for the tips.
Re: We purchased a machine from China and it came with malware preinstalled
#87> AliExpress Says Malware is OK [...] They stated that it does not breach their terms and that no action will be taken.
I'm sure many things don't explicitly breach their terms, but surely I expected there to be a catchall that would include malware. Of course, their terms are to protect AliExpress, and not the consumer, so it doesn't look like they'd wanna go above and beyond on that end, but I hoped they'd at least care about customer satisfaction.
Re: We purchased a machine from China and it came with malware preinstalled
#88The story here is not the fact of the malware - it is the purpose of the malware: industrial espionage. China is well-known in industry for its sheer volume and brazenness of industrial espionage. A pick-and-place machine is especially well placed for this since it will, by necessity, have access to PCB designs and BOMs.
I have seen enough stories of supply-line sabotage to think that if you are going to build your infrastructure with Chinese hardware, air-gapping it is a necessity. Probably a good idea to air-gap your pick and place machine even if it is not Chinese.
Airgapping wouldn’t be enough here since it infects any USB device plugged in. You’ll have to run the USB through some antivirus any time you want to use a new design from a “good” computer.
Re: We purchased a machine from China and it came with malware preinstalled
#89Hug of death probably so I cannot read the article. Anyway 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. If something doesn't match the description send it back, if you find random executables that you cannot identify send it back, if you are asked to register on some weird…
I bought a bluetooth dongle on Amazon recently. didn't work out of the box, and the instruction booklet told me I had to download and install an unsigned device driver that I should download from a specific dropbox link.
I tried to write a measured review on Amazon explaining the problem, but Amazon rejected the review. I threw it away and composed an angsty tweet [1], but I really should have returned it.
[1] https://twitter.com/ojensen5115/status/1351598563751559169
Re: We purchased a machine from China and it came with malware preinstalled
#90The malware is a cherry on top, but the story before that is pretty awful already, and unfortunately seems to be representative of specialized software like that: proprietary (with constant risk of malware, indeed), awkward, poorly (if at all) documented, likely the protocols to speak to the hardware without it are kept in secret, and occasional shipment of Windows machines where just software would do (but probably…
Tbf, the focus on secrecy is probably because everything in China is at risk of being copied / ripped off by competitors at the drop of a hat. Being an IP wild west has its drawbacks.