ALERT: Chinese Espionage Test

China wants you!  Or at least your sensitive computer data…  This is a story of potential identity theft on a grand scale.  While the details seem small in scale most scouting missions are small and seem insignificant.  Bearing that in mind here’s what has me fired up…

Once again the Chinese government has been caught “Red” handed testing its espionage capabilities and Western detection capabilities.  The recent incident involves a pair of Trojan horse (malicious unauthorized programs) on new Maxtor Hard Drives before they left the factory.  The function of these Trojans was to steal passwords and then “phone home” to a pair of websites hosted in Beijing reporting all data recorded on theses Trojaned drives.  The Trojaned drives are Seagate Technology, Maxtor Basics 3200, 500GB drives.   Approximately 1800 of the Trojaned drives were shipped from the factory with 300 being sold before the problem was detected.

The Taiwanese government’s security service detected the problem and issued a warning this weekend.  Their investigation uncovered the link to China and suspects Chinese authorities are responsible for planting the Trojan software on the drives in the factory.  Seagate Technologies attempted to distance itself from the allegations again China stating it had no proof of Chinese government involvement.  Internet logs (records) show that the information was sent to 2 Chinese sites registered with one of China’s largest domain registrars using what appears to be bogus information.

This latest story seems to demonstrate a dangerous trend in Chinese activity that one has to be blind (or corrupt) to not see.  From hacking the Pentagon and German Government Offices to showing off their military advances the Chinese government is increasingly flexing its muscles and testing its abilities.  When you couple these types of events with the massive military buildup in China over the past decade few historians disagree about the potential future threat to world peace.  Of course there is no public outcry, no Congressional or Presidential complaint or investigation.  Instead we will increase the worker visa program and continue to pump billions a year from our economy to theirs.

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