The China Syndrome

SephStorm

Government InfoSec professionals and leaders, please read this.

Vmyths The China Syndrome

Vmyths is the only computer security website that investigated and revealed details of the antivirus industry’s dirtiest little secret — a conspiracy among antivirus vendors to arm China with viruses. Their goal: to pave governmental inroads to China’s growing corporate market for PCs and software.

Vmyths interviewed some of the biggest players in the scandal while they were reeling from guilt, including the U.S. citizen who stood at the very center of it all. Collectively, these “deep throats” admitted to Vmyths that officials in Beijing received up to 30,000 unique virus samples, detailed source code, and reverse-engineering notes. These insiders also admitted they purposely kept U.S. federal officials in the dark.
U.S. citizens at McAfee, Symantec, and Trend Micro played key roles in the secret arming of China — all of it done while those companies advised the White House and the FBI on global cyber-threats. Richard Clarke, then a senior White House staffer, was so oblivious to it that he offered to give “STU-III” secure telephones to antivirus vendors so they could talk freely & openly with each other.


Another reason to go with free AV companies?

GAngel

SephStorm wrote: »

Government InfoSec professionals and leaders, please read this.

Vmyths The China Syndrome

Vmyths is the only computer security website that investigated and revealed details of the antivirus industry’s dirtiest little secret — a conspiracy among antivirus vendors to arm China with viruses. Their goal: to pave governmental inroads to China’s growing corporate market for PCs and software.

Vmyths interviewed some of the biggest players in the scandal while they were reeling from guilt, including the U.S. citizen who stood at the very center of it all. Collectively, these “deep throats” admitted to Vmyths that officials in Beijing received up to 30,000 unique virus samples, detailed source code, and reverse-engineering notes. These insiders also admitted they purposely kept U.S. federal officials in the dark.
U.S. citizens at McAfee, Symantec, and Trend Micro played key roles in the secret arming of China — all of it done while those companies advised the White House and the FBI on global cyber-threats. Richard Clarke, then a senior White House staffer, was so oblivious to it that he offered to give “STU-III” secure telephones to antivirus vendors so they could talk freely & openly with each other.


Another reason to go with free AV companies?

I don't know about all this spy vs spy stuff but mcafee and symantec are terrible AV's.

JDMurray

GAngel wrote: »

I don't know about all this spy vs spy stuff but mcafee and symantec are terrible AV's.

McAfee, Symantec, and Trend do a lot more than just A/V. "Industry experts" are boggled at Intel's attempted acquisition of McAfee because they don't understand how many things beyond A/V McAfee does. The "spy stuff" is part of it.

SephStorm

Truthfully, I don't know. What I do know is that I find it amazing, that one week we see stories like this, then the next we hear about how china is the worlds leading distributor of malware, and noone seems to put the two together. in fact I read one review that stated that people should not be alarmed, that this is a normal part of business that should be accepted.

I'm sorry, but think it is obvious that the first thing that went through the head of the CEO's of these companies was how much fatter their wallets would be now, not how china might leverage this knowledge against us in the future.