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What a surprise, another quiet weekend – nothing much has been going on apart from the big furore about Facebook<\/a> privacy – which frankly has been discussed<\/a> to<\/a> death<\/a>.<\/p>\n Other than that, 2 critical patches are expected in the next Microsoft patch Tuesday – info here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n One story which I did find interesting was about fake networking gear, mostly Cisco which the Feds have been seizing for the past 5 years under Operation Network Raider – with more than 700 seizures and 30 felony convictions, that sure is a lot of dodgy gear out there!<\/p>\n Federal authorities over the past fives year have seized more than $143m worth of counterfeit Cisco hardware and labels in a coordinated operation that’s netted more than 700 seizures and 30 felony convictions, the Justice Department said Thursday.<\/p>\n Operation Network Raider is an enforcement initiative involving the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agencies working to crack down on the bogus routers, switches and other networking gear. In addition to costing Cisco and other US businesses millions of dollars, the scams could threaten national security by infusing critical networks with gear that’s unreliable or, worse, riddled with backdoors.<\/p>\n As part of the operation, Ehab Ashoor, 49, a Saudi citizen residing in Sugarland, Texas, was sentenced this week to 51 months in prison and ordered to pay Cisco $119,400 in restitution after being found guilty of trying to sell counterfeit gear to the US Department of Defense. In 2008, he attempted to traffic 100 gigabit interface converters that were bought in China and contained labels fraudulently indicating they were genuine Cisco equipment, according to court documents. The kit was to be used by the US Marine Corps for communications in Iraq<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The scary part for me is not that this stuff is out there, but that it is being sold to the US government! Especially that some was destined to be used by the US Military in Iraq. Now with the relations between China and the US the conspiracy theorists could come up with some interesting thoughts on this.<\/p>\n The sentences handed out are pretty stiff though with 51 months in prison, even though I guess it’ll be some cushy white-collar prison and not some hardcore federal penitentiary.<\/p>\n In January, 33-year-old Chinese resident Yongcai Li was ordered to serve 30 months in prison and pay restitution of $790,683 for trafficking counterfeit Cisco gear, officials said.<\/p>\n The prospect that government and business networks may have deployed bogus gear has raised national security concerns, since much of the counterfeit equipment originates in China. Similar espionage fears were raised by research from University of Illinois researchers, who in 2008 showed how they were able to modify a Sun Microsystems SPARC microprocessor to effectively create a hardwired backdoor capable of logging passwords or other sensitive data.<\/p>\n In May of 2008, Cisco officials said they had no evidence that any of the counterfeit networking gear contained backdoors.<\/p>\n Since late 2007, US authorities have made more than 1,300 seizures of 5.6 million bogus semiconductors. More than 50 shipments were falsely marked as military or aerospace grade devices. The Justice Department’s press release is here<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n From the restitution figures it seems like Yongcai Li sold a lot higher volume than Ehab Ashoor but his prison sentence is much shorter. Perhaps he was given a more lenient sentence as he wasn’t directly trying to sell the fake gear to the US government and military.<\/p>\n They state none of the networking equipment contained backdoors, but then if they did – would they really tell anyone? They were obviously trying to buy cheap gear on the side rather than dealing directly with Cisco – not a wise decision.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n