Congress Warns China Could Spy on Military at Home Through Smart Devices

Lawmakers are warning about an interesting risk. Military personnel or one of their family members could buy an electronic device at the local base exchange that is made in China. Given that we have very limited regulations on electronic device security (mostly it is about, possibly, going after a company years after they are caught spying), one of these Chinese devices could easily be spying on our military personnel and whatever they are doing, in their homes, on or off base, or anywhere on their portable electronic devices.

Example might be a home WiFi router made by one of the lawmakers’ target companies, TP-Link. The lawmakers are suggesting that TP-Link, a Chinese company (with a US subsidiary that the company says is not influenced by the CCP — sure, I believe that, not), could configure that router to send data about what that soldier or sailor or family member is doing, to a server, say at Amazon Web Services, which is later processed and fed back to the CCP.

Another example might be a fitness wearable, which we have already seen to be leaking location data. If the person works at the base commissary, that problem not as big a problem as someone who works in a sensitive position. We have already seen this problem with special forces people and wearables.

In this particular case, the lawmakers are focusing on TP-Link, but that is a bad decision. There are probably millions of products made in China that are sold on Amazon and at Walmart and other stores that could just as easily be leaking data to China. TP-Link sold at base exchanges is just one espionage attack vector.

Other potential spy devices are security cameras, the vast majority of which are made in China, baby monitors, smart anythings, doorbells with cameras, etc.

Just like US companies, Chinese companies are required to support whatever spying activities the government asks them to. While America may require a letter (sometimes forged) from some law enforcement agency or more simply, by hacking the American company’s supply chain, the risk really not much different.

While the US has barred Huawei products, many other products are still made in China and sold under many different brand labels each.

So, unless we want to stop importing electronics from China, which is an option, but which would drive up the cost and dramatically drive down availability, we have a bit of a problem. Estimates are that an iPhone made in America would cost around $3,000 compared to the current $1,000 cost. And it is not a problem that the average consumer, even if they want to, can guarantee is not happening to them.

Credit: NY Post

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