Its no wonder trump LOVES ZTE!!

[Phil1111 1,183]

The story below is from Australian Financial Review. A financial and equities publication.

Chinese telco ZTE bribed its way to greatness, now focuses on Australia
May 14 2018

An investigation by Fairfax Media has found ZTE not only paid $US12.8 million ($17 million) in bribes to secure one contract in West Africa, but had a designated internal department and multiple layers of management to approve these payments, according to a former insider.

Documents show the bribes were meticulously recorded and ran to more than 20 per cent of one contract's value, helping to explain how ZTE rapidly became the world's third largest supplier of telecommunications equipment by 2012....

ZTE and its compatriot, Huawei, are also banned from bidding on government contracts in the US, over fears their products could contain backdoors allowing an element of surveillance and even control from agencies in China....

Systematic in its approval and documentation of bribery

The internal documents cited by Fairfax Media show ZTE was systematic in its approval and documentation of bribery, as it sought to expand outside its home market of China in the early 2000s...

it paid $US6 million in bribes to secure a $US36 million CDMA contract for the telco. This suggests about 22 per cent of the value of each contract was paid out in inducements.

Appear to breach tough US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

The revelations could create further problems for ZTE as they appear to breach the tough US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and could be used by regulators in Washington to further sanction the company....

The issue of Huawei or ZTE building Australia's 5G networks was raised by national security agencies in Washington during Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's visit in February.
http://www.afr.com/business/telecommunications/chinese-telco-zte-bribed-its-way-to-greatness-now-focuses-on-australia-20180513-h0zztm

[Phil1111 1,183]

The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate U.S. Companies

The attack by Chinese spies reached almost 30 U.S. companies, including Amazon and Apple, by compromising America’s technology supply chain, according to extensive interviews with government and corporate sources.

During the ensuing top-secret probe, which remains open more than three years later, investigators determined that the chips allowed the attackers to create a stealth doorway into any network that included the altered machines. Multiple people familiar with the matter say investigators found that the chips had been inserted at factories run by manufacturing subcontractors in China.

This attack was something graver than the software-based incidents the world has grown accustomed to seeing. Hardware hacks are more difficult to pull off and potentially more devastating, promising the kind of long-term, stealth access that spy agencies are willing to invest millions of dollars and many years to get.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies

Lenovo and ZTE shares hit by spyware row
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45756685

[ScottishJohn 25]

To Be honest, this sounds like Science Fiction to me .

The tiny chips, as small as the tip of a sharpened pencil and designed to give hackers unfettered access to anything the server did, allowing them to potentially manipulate the server to steal data, contact other servers and alter operations.

Also Apple and Amazon have disputed the allegation

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/04/china-planted-chips-on-apple-and-amazon-servers-report-claims

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If you think my attitude stinks you should smell my fingers

[billvon 3,120]

>To Be honest, this sounds like Science Fiction to me .

Not too hard at the hardware level.

Many systems initially boot from FLASH. There are a lot of kinds of FLASH; one kind is serial (i.e. the data comes out in one pin, one bit at a time.) If you put an IC in line with the serial data line, then you can alter it to whatever you like - and it just looks like a simple three or four terminal device, like an LC filter or something (something you'd expect to see on a motherboard.)

It would be tough to make sure that whatever modification you added to the code was always compatible with the existing code, but that's not an insurmountable problem.

What this means is the the initial boot would always have the malicious code in it, no matter how many times you re-FLASHed the board or updated the code. The malicious boot code could then go out to the net to look for an external server to connect to; the external server would then contain the more extensive hack (like a routine that downloads the password file to an external address.)

[gowlerk 2,277]

Sure Bill, easy peasy. It's not science fiction at all. No, it's MAGIC!

[JoeWeber 2,941]

gowlerk

Sure Bill, easy peasy. It's not science fiction at all. No, it's MAGIC!

That's right, Ken. In fact, I was just doing it this morning trying to hack Ron's selfie files.

[ryoder 1,590]

ScottishJohn

To Be honest, this sounds like Science Fiction to me .

This stuff also sounds like SciFi, and it leaked out in 2013: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_ANT_catalog

"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

[tkhayes 348]

I worked for IBM from 81-95. When IBM moved their thinkpad production to China and then xferred it all to Lenovo (in China) the first thing I thought of was the ability to build in spyware right into the hardware and how would anyone know or even be able to detect that it exists.

More than ever, I assume that this stuff already exists in every piece of hardware out there. especially high-end networking routers, switches etc, and I am sure a spy game being played by corporations and govts around the world where they have access to the technology.

I am certain that big brother is watching

[Phil1111 1,183]

tkhayes

I worked for IBM from 81-95. When IBM moved their thinkpad production to China and then xferred it all to Lenovo (in China) the first thing I thought of was the ability to build in spyware right into the hardware and how would anyone know or even be able to detect that it exists.

More than ever, I assume that this stuff already exists in every piece of hardware out there. especially high-end networking routers, switches etc, and I am sure a spy game being played by corporations and govts around the world where they have access to the technology.

I am certain that big brother is watching

After this I would never buy a Lenovo product. The influence that the Chinese state has through outright ownership and control of Chinese corporations is absolute.