Cisco accused of building a Great Chinese Firewall

In a 2002 Cisco (China) PowerPoint presentation entitled “An Overview of [China's] Public Security Industry”, a Cisco (China) official in the Government Business Department listed the “Golden Shield Project” – the host project of China’s Great Firewall – as one of Cisco's major target customers. In this document, which apparently lays out the marketing strategy for Cisco (China) to sell products to the Chinese security police, one of the main objectives of the Golden Shield was to “combat the ‘Falun Gong’ evil cult” – parroting the rhetoric of the Chinese authorities used to persecute Falun Gong.

In the presentation page headed "Cisco Opportunities [in the Golden Shield Project]," Cisco offers much more than just routers; it offers planning, construction, technical training, and operations maintenance for the Golden Shield. Global Internet Freedom Consortium research shows that the infrastructure of China’s Great Firewall coincides with the layouts in Cisco (China)’s PowerPoint document.

One of Golden Shield's stated goals in the Cisco presentation was to "combat 'Falun Gong' evil religion and other hostiles," -- a statement that was attributed to Runsen Li, the Chinese government information technology chief in charge of developing the project.

Shiyu Zhou, deputy director of the Global Internet Freedom Consortium said Cisco could be offering, "censorship training" to Chinese authorities. A 2002 internal company document lists China's "Golden Shield" censorship project as one of Cisco's "major target customers," Zhou told the Senate human rights subcommittee.

Mark Chandler, Cisco's senior vice president of legal services, said during the Tuesday Senate hearing that he was "appalled" and "disappointed" when he saw that quote in the presentation.

"Cisco is the largest producer of networking equipment and sells the same products worldwide. It does not customize the equipment to help repressive governments censor the Internet", General counsel Mark Chandler said at a Senate hearing Tuesday. "The company's routers and switches have basic security features that protect networks from viruses and service interruptions", he said.

That part of the document was a quote from an official Chinese government statement condemning "hostile elements," Chandler said. The presentation was done by a Chinese engineer working for Cisco.

"We regret that the engineer included that in the presentation, even by way of explaining the Chinese government's goals," Chandler said. "We disavow the implication that this reflects in any way Cisco's views or objectives."

"It is very regrettable that one of our engineers quoted directly from Mr. Runsen Li, the Chinese government's head of IT for the Golden Shield project in this internal presentation," said Terry Alberstein, a senior director of corporate communications at Cisco. "They do not represent Cisco's views, principles or its sales and marketing strategy or approach. They were merely inserted in that presentation to capture the goals of the Chinese government in that specific project, which was one of many discussed in that 2002 presentation."

About Global Internet Freedom Consortium:

Global Internet Freedom Consortium is the largest and longest anti-censorship operation in the world.
The Consortium has run the world’s largest anti-censorship operation since 2000. Our five existing tools – UltraSurf, DynaWeb FreeGate, Garden, GPass, and FirePhoenix — currently accommodate an estimated 95% of the total anti-censorship traffic in closed societies around the world, and are used DAILY by millions of users. As of January 2008, the Top Five censoring countries with the most average daily hits to our anti-censorship systems are (hits per day):
(a) China: 194.4 million
(b) Iran: 74.8 million
(c) Saudi Arabia: 8.4 million
(d) UAE: 8 million
(e) Syria: 2.8 million
They say that "The Great Firewall will be taken down as the Berlin Wall."

About Cisco:

Cisco is a multinational corporation with more than 63,000 employees and annual revenue of US$35 billion as of 2007. Headquartered in San Jose, California, it designs and sells networking and communications technology and services under five brands, namely Cisco, Linksys, WebEx, IronPort, and Scientific Atlanta.

Reports on Chinese Firewall:
The internal Cisco PDF
Battle for Freedom in Chinese Cyberspace
New Technologies Battle and Defeat Internet Censorship, 2007-11-21
Wikipedia

FBI fears Chinese have back doors into US government networks

FBI is investigating security leaks that could help Chinese government or Chinese hackers (or both) to benefit of undetectable back-doors into highly secure government and military computer networks for months, perhaps years. The cause: a high-number of counterfeit Cisco routers and switches installed in nearly all government networks that experienced upgrades and/or new units within the past 18 months.

US government has been attempting to avoid security issues by using only higher-end Cisco partners/suppliers for the gear. Cisco have 80% of the market share on networking solutions and 1 of 10 Cisco products are fake. These products are sold on the black market ans can end-up in sensitive networks. However, the highly-competitive lowest-bid environment of government procurement has inspired several vendors to look for cheap alternatives for hardware... resulting in a catastrophic meltdown of security.

There is an unclassified FBI presentation that has been released discusses the fear that China is intentionally having counterfeit Cisco hardware sold in the United States. In the presentation, the FBI discusses four cases that they had investigated where this hardware has been discovered even in classified networks.

The more serious statements made in this presentation are on slide 30, where they claim about 10% of the information technology hardware that is sold globally is counterfeit and it is being sold through legitimate channels (KPMG is the cited source) for the past couple of years. In the case of Cisco, this counterfeit hardware is sold through their Cisco Gold and Silver Partners program. Other vendor vetting processes are just as flawed allowing this hardware to enter into your IT infrastructure.

This photo from the FBI presentation shows the differences between a original Cisco Router and a fake one:


FBI is concerned about critical infrastructure damage and the potential of access to secure government systems. Many online IT circles have been speculating that the counterfeit hardware will provide backdoor capabilities and access into compromised networks for the originators of the equipment. In fact, some areas of speculation regarding the counterfeit Cisco equipment has focused on the possibility that the hardware is being manufactured expressly to deploy exploitable systems far and wide into the wild. The rationale being that the likely "wholesale" price of the counterfeit routers and switches are so low and profit margins likely very thin, that the only real advantage may be gained from downstream system exploits in the future.

US Government should buy only from mainland assembly plants (in the US, preferably monitored) and cutting out any suspicious links in the chain.

Another issue of security that Richard Marcinko was complaining about back in the 90's that nobody took seriously. He has said that the chinese have been getting their hands on our top secret electronic hardware for years. He even says that we've been secretly giving the equipment to them in exchange for political leverage and a lot of other things. He says that china has an extensive spying scheme and network in the US. and that it's very compartmentalized.

System boards are made in China. The BIOS chip on these boards are made there so is easy to have the OS open up a network connection when triggered, thinking it is supposed to because the BIOS claims it has this port open for this card.

This is not the first time when a government authority finds major backdoors.

The German Counter Intelligence found years ago that Internet hackers started to point out several build-in software backdoors for the NSA and other agencies in their Bundeswehr Windows systems and could affect the German economy. (Articles on Wired.com, DebianHelp)

They developed their own proprietary Operating Systems, based mainly on LINUX software rules, and forced all sensitive German government and army offices to change to those OS's, and got rid of all Microsoft infected software.

These facts reminds me the scandal of the American embassy in Moscow in 1987, when the US diplomats refused to move to the new embassy because of rumors that the embassy was filled with soviet surveillance equipment during its construction. I've heard that Clinton received the full schemes of the surveillance system after the fall of URSS. (Another article on NYTimes)

Source AboveTopSecret, News.com
The FBI Presentation

Ericsson boost its deals in China

Wireless infrastructure specialist Ericsson has won two major deals with the Chinese operators China Mobile and China Unicom in total worth nearly $1.5 bn to the Swedish group.

Separately, Ericsson has also signed a GSM expansion framework agreement with China Mobile valued at $1.3 bn and another with China Unicom valued at around $140 million. The expansion projects are set to be completed in 2008.

Together, China Mobile and China Unicom provide mobile services to about 550 million subscribers. The expansion projects will allow both operators to boost their network capacity and performance.

Under the framework deal with China Mobile, Ericsson will be one of the main suppliers of core and radio network equipment, along with related technical support and services, to expand GSM/GPRS coverage and capacity in 19 regions across China.

Suppliers are still waiting for China to sign 3G license agreements with the country's major operators, and have been for over three years.

Earlier this month, the country moved a step closer to commercializing its home grown 3G technology, with the revelation that the country's leading operator is to trial TD-SCDMA services.