Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Healthy Paranoia

More developments on the US-China Commission's decision not to use Chinese manufactured PCs on the SIRPnet follow, an event I covered in a previous post "Espionage Ghosts Busters". The oficially stated attack vector, namely that "..a significant portion" of Lenovo is owned by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, an arm of the Chinese government." is nothing more than a healthy paranoia to me, one reaching to the skies on certain occassions, of course. Just came across to an article summarizing some recent events :

"The U.S. State Department recently declared that due to national security concerns, it would restrict use of the 16,000 computers it purchased to nonclassified work. It had originally planned to use 900 of the machines on a network connecting U.S. embassies. Lenovo’s goal of becoming the “Sony of China” could be impeded by worries over its machines’ security, blocking its strategy to move out of its Asia stronghold and into the West by courting North American computer users and possibly listing on U.S. stock markets. That realization sparked outcry from officials of both the Chinese government and the computer company."

However, today's monocultural reality, and favorable trend towards diversity will have greater impact on the (in) security of the PCs. Moreover, the "manufactured in China" reality is a commonly shared myth, one that keeps getting debunked as well :

"Almost any PC you can name has Chinese content,” said Roger Kay, president of the research firm Endpoint Technologies Associates. He pointed to Intel semiconductors and Seagate hard drives made in China. He also noted that 80 percent of notebooks sold worldwide are manufactured in China."

Even if Lenovo dared to implement hardware backdoors, or ship the PCs rootkit ready, it could have successfully ruined its business future -- insider pressure is always an option, but what do you got besides speculation? Don't unload China Communist Party's load on this recently separated from IBM devision, they aren't in the most favorable position, still remain among the top players on the PC market, right next to the efficiency machine Dell, which as a matter of fact recently completed its second high-tech factory in China.

Healthy paranoia, or the George Orwell inside you? Comic page text generated at Gaxed.com