posted on Jun, 21 2009 @ 05:00 AM
I'll share with you a little experience I had at my old work place. I was a member of the security team for a large US corporation. We had several
computers submitting suspicious outside traffic. After some investigation I narrowed it down to a small group of computers in a corner office. To my
surprise I discovered the router to be at fault. There was a hardware back door built into the router and thus we had to replace the router.
Discovering such vulnerabilities is at times very difficult. Often times peers in my field will always suspect a software based attack but now days
hackers are much more easily able to write directly to hardware, extending the security threat.
There are so many "zero day virus" out there that slip bellow the radar of the top scanners. One of the most conman way, now days one gets a virus
is illegal downloading a application or a game. Some people are even foolish enough to pirate there operating system. Just about every pirated OS
I've seen available online has root kit in Window's API. Which means it can hide it self indefinitely.
Since the hardware is compromised from day one with the intent to exploit its the careless training and schooling that is at fault in my opinion.
Most IT professionals will take a router, a switch, or a hub out of the box, plug it in and forget about it. With today's securtiy threats we need
to consider every possible angle.
So there routers are compromised, what about a compromised operating system? To say Microsoft operating systems are secure is like saying Charles
Manson is a sane man. I always scratched my head wondering why the US government chooses to use such a blatantly insecure OS such as Windows. Yes
it's sad but true, everyone from the FBI to Navy, and yes some of the NSA use Microsoft operating systems with computers made in China. We are
whoring our secrets away, but I guess they were already bought and paid for. I can see the day coming when Chinese tanks roll down Melrose Blvd.
It's a game of cat and mouse really. Every lock is going to be broken at some point.
Really I hope if the Chinese discover something ground breaking like we have 0 point energy or something life changing they'll share the information.
=D
[edit on 21-6-2009 by oconnection]