Surely they don't need backdoors when they can just exploit the awful network security that American networking equipment vendors already come with out of the box?
The US needed to smuggle Stuxnet in, but with networking equipment there's a treasure trove of shitty practices. Cisco and Juniper have been caught hiding hard-coded password how many times now?
At this point, any US company's products on software and hardware side can be safely considered an espionage asset. Even ignoring well known things like intercepting international packages during transit and putting malware into them.
Same goes obviously for ie Chinese stuff, but I don't think you guys realize how for outsider the border between China and US in terms of morality is practically non-existent now. I don't mean it in any snarky way, just looking at facts.
Also, China doesn't invade countries half around the world and bring them to utter destruction and misery for generations to come, killing thousands to millions of civilians and creating breeding grounds for things like ISIS. They do their own thing, quietly and patiently, with laser focus and for outsiders its at most 'not great not terrible' category.
Which is why banning chinese routers and banning chinese cars than can be remotely disabled by the komrades makes sense.
Selling cars, worldwide, made sense when they weren't always connected to the mother land. Germans selling you a BMW in the 80s? You've got the key: you turn the key. They couldn't turn off all the BMWs if suddenly the US were to be at war with Germany again.
But this madness of cars receiving OTA updates and remote subscriptions and whatnots?
The era of "smart cars" actually makes targeting much easier. You don't need to bulk disable cars in a country.
Imagine an enemy country using zero-days to track a military leader via their personal device(s), then disabling their smart civilian vehicle they use to commute to work. Final leg is they had previously parked drones along their expected commute routes for just such an occasion and..
I presume the very basic safety requirement for any VIP person in the future will be fully offline car, with updates only done at certified secured service, or simply not done since the car just keeps working. Something along melting chip of 5g/whatever antenna or ripping out whole comm box.
Ah, think about it, the luxury of owning your own car, you and only you. I can almost imagine it. The future, its bright.
If you bought a BMW in the 80s and you were suddenly at war with Germany, you'd be stuck scavenging for replacement parts the moment something in the engine failed. It's not as easy and direct, but the problem is still there.
Doing business with the enemy always comes with a risk. For countries that don't build their own networking equipment (including the PCBs and chips), you have to accept some level of risk or you have to avoid such technology all together.
Indeed, though we are also finding out how bad it is to not have any local competition in many fields of hardware, software, and manufacturing.
Heavily sanctioned countries like Afghanistan and Iran have one thing going for them, and that's that they can't easily build a dependence on foreign technology (though not having such technology at all is arguably just as bad).
The average time before a car NEEDS a replacement part to run must be at least a few years. That's a different situation from flipping a switch to turn all connected cars off.
Surely they don't need backdoors when they can just exploit the awful network security that American networking equipment vendors already come with out of the box?
The US needed to smuggle Stuxnet in, but with networking equipment there's a treasure trove of shitty practices. Cisco and Juniper have been caught hiding hard-coded password how many times now?
Sometimes it's hard to tell if it's a real bug or a backdoor masquerading as a vulnerability.
It's a bugdoor.
At this point, any US company's products on software and hardware side can be safely considered an espionage asset. Even ignoring well known things like intercepting international packages during transit and putting malware into them.
Same goes obviously for ie Chinese stuff, but I don't think you guys realize how for outsider the border between China and US in terms of morality is practically non-existent now. I don't mean it in any snarky way, just looking at facts.
Also, China doesn't invade countries half around the world and bring them to utter destruction and misery for generations to come, killing thousands to millions of civilians and creating breeding grounds for things like ISIS. They do their own thing, quietly and patiently, with laser focus and for outsiders its at most 'not great not terrible' category.
Which is why they should have bought networking equipment from their friends.
Is it worse than bombing school, though?
Turns out, a $14.5 Billion budget can buy some mind-bendingly awesome cyber effects.
Which is why banning chinese routers and banning chinese cars than can be remotely disabled by the komrades makes sense.
Selling cars, worldwide, made sense when they weren't always connected to the mother land. Germans selling you a BMW in the 80s? You've got the key: you turn the key. They couldn't turn off all the BMWs if suddenly the US were to be at war with Germany again.
But this madness of cars receiving OTA updates and remote subscriptions and whatnots?
The era of "smart cars" actually makes targeting much easier. You don't need to bulk disable cars in a country.
Imagine an enemy country using zero-days to track a military leader via their personal device(s), then disabling their smart civilian vehicle they use to commute to work. Final leg is they had previously parked drones along their expected commute routes for just such an occasion and..
edit: see interesting hypothetical future war series on YT, specifically this bit.. https://youtu.be/drr7mmibt9E?t=157
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_(journalist)#...
I presume the very basic safety requirement for any VIP person in the future will be fully offline car, with updates only done at certified secured service, or simply not done since the car just keeps working. Something along melting chip of 5g/whatever antenna or ripping out whole comm box.
Ah, think about it, the luxury of owning your own car, you and only you. I can almost imagine it. The future, its bright.
Have you missed the Trump presidencies?
If you bought a BMW in the 80s and you were suddenly at war with Germany, you'd be stuck scavenging for replacement parts the moment something in the engine failed. It's not as easy and direct, but the problem is still there.
Doing business with the enemy always comes with a risk. For countries that don't build their own networking equipment (including the PCBs and chips), you have to accept some level of risk or you have to avoid such technology all together.
> Doing business with the enemy always comes with a risk.
Or indeed with allies, as Europe is just finding out...
Indeed, though we are also finding out how bad it is to not have any local competition in many fields of hardware, software, and manufacturing.
Heavily sanctioned countries like Afghanistan and Iran have one thing going for them, and that's that they can't easily build a dependence on foreign technology (though not having such technology at all is arguably just as bad).
The average time before a car NEEDS a replacement part to run must be at least a few years. That's a different situation from flipping a switch to turn all connected cars off.
But on average, all cars are a few years old, and wars aren't over in a few months.
Mechanical parts can be reverse engineered after you run out of inventory and the ability to gray-source them via 3rd parties/countries.
Also that is an "eventual problem".
The era of smart everything exposes you to pinpoint time/place/person disablement by the enemy.
Not for a BMW though.
So they burned through weapon stockpile and also through zero day stockpile. Good job, another strategic success which will help in war with China...