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US Military Wasted Millions on Fake Hardware, Sparking Cyber-Terrorism Fears
Posted by Gizmodo US Edition at 5:00 AM on May 11, 2008
The U.S. Military has spent millions of dollars on counterfeit computer components over the years, according to an FBI report. This not only screws over businesses, but it also makes it easier for cyber-terrorists to hack into our systems by putting trojans and viruses in fake circuitry. An anti-counterfeit initiative by the FBI, led to 15 criminal cases and over US$3.5 million worth of seized products.
Oh Spam, my how you have grown! Thirty years ago, on this day, you came into the world as a little misguided e-mail sent by an equipment engineer over Arpanet to promote a new line of computers. You were quickly shot down by other Arpanet users who called it an "insult... to have an obvious commercial message sent out over a research network." Yet, at some point in time, people stopped protesting you loudly enough. Now you comprise 80 percent to 95 percent of all e-mail sent, your crafty trojans and pesky viruses have infected millions of computers, and you've cost IT departments nearly US$200 billion to combat you. But since it's your birthday, instead of telling you like we usually do to GTFO, let us sing you a little song instead. It goes something like this:
From Wired's Randy Alfred:
Roughly 1,800 external drives manufactured by Seagate were infected with a Trojan horse virus that sent personal information back to China, according to the Taipei Times. The disk drives, sold at retail in Taiwan, were presumably messed with when they were in the possession of one of Seagate's Chinese subcontractors. The situation has been locked down, but it certainly puts a new spin on security fears, and Seagate itself has got to be pretty freaked out. All we have at the moment is a statement: "All products leaving the factory are now cleared of the virus." [
