Cyber-Sabotage in Counterfeit Hardware

Cyber-Sabotage in Counterfeit Hardware

www.defensetech.org

In January of 2008, a joint task force seized $78 million of counterfeit Cisco networking hardware. This international effort resulted in over 400 seizures of counterfeit networking hardware that was shipped between China, Canada and the United States. This international effort between the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and supported by other agencies within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) clearly shows the criminal efforts that are underway.

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I see this as another reason to install a 'chip' that can verify the 'authenticity' of the hardware used.

To protect against the counterfeit threat, will they need to monitor all hardware everywhere? (It might already be going on, but this way they can go public with it, as society will demand to be secure).

Questions:
- Why does the bogus hardware show up in Canada and U.S. only?

- Why don't we see other countries being duped by fake hardware? If money is the goal, then logically the people responsible would sell that fake hardware all over the world. Also, since Cisco is the 'king' of the internet, there's better potential of getting money from all countries, instead of only a select few.

- If the fake hardware is known to be manufactured in China, what is preventing the authorities to put a stop to it? Nothing.

$78 million in 'sales' is a lot of money to lose in the name of cracking down on the fakers.


www.defensetech.org
(visit the link for the full news article)