The Trouble With Bringing Your Business Laptop To China

snydeq writes "A growing trend faces business executives traveling to China: government or industry spooks stealing data from their laptops and installing spyware. 'While you were out to dinner that first night, someone entered your room (often a nominal hotel staffer), carefully examined the contents of your laptop, and installed spyware on the computer — without your having a clue. The result? Exposure of information, including customer data, product development documentation, countless emails, and other proprietary information of value to competitors and foreign governments. Perhaps even, thanks to the spyware, there's an ongoing infection in your corporate network that continually phones home key secrets for months or years afterward.'"

Fix 'em good.

[ackthpt]

Take a TRS-80 and watch them try to figure it out.

Re:encryption

[Qzukk]

Why doesn't your business mandate HDD encryption?

Not that it would matter, some person would decide its too much trouble entering the password all the time and just leave the laptop on.

Always encryption

[rbprbp]

If you are travelling anywhere without HDD encryption, then you kinda deserve this. By the way, let's see them trying to put spyware on a PowerPC Linux laptop. :)

Hah, I had this problem...

[DDLKermit007]

I had this problem when I was doing work with associates in China when I was working to develop some software to use there. After going out one night I noticed the next day my laptop had been gotten into. Sure they poked around, but I didn't care. Not stupid enough to actually bring any data physically there with me. Checked the machine for anything funky, but seemed he was poking around to copy any interesting data. In the end they ended up trying to screw us & do the job we were doing which was they found really hard without our actual software in their hands. We just ran pointers that always pushed data from China back to the US where we churned through the data because I was a paranoid maniac. Sucks the company went under due to them, but felt a sort of sick satisfaction they ended up looking really dumb when everything ground to a halt suddenly.

Re:Booby trap time

[cheros]

the laptop battery goes critical on bootup

Nah. Dell tried that already..

Or Windows '98

[kawabago]

and infect them right back!

Re:EVIL MAID!

[FatdogHaiku]

Well... that explains why the HOT HORNY MAID never showed up... she got canned so they could insert their perfidious data thief in her place! Damn. Someone should update the Asian Porn section of the internet so travelers aren't disappointed...

Re:Or Windows '98

[RabidReindeer]

How about Windows 95 with Microsoft Bob?

I think that's a violation of the Geneva Convention.

Re:encryption

[ColdWetDog]

And if the laptop has a firewire port, i'm fairly certain RAM can be dumped on ANY operating system [gnome.org].

Ah, this must be the reason that Apple is dropping Firewire in it's laptops. Always looking out for us. Thanks Steve! (wherever you are)

troll them

[Lehk228]

Troll like a pro, carry lots and lots of "super sekrit" docs in a poorly truecrypted volume (password on a sticky note under the mouse)

gigabytes and gigabytes of detailed looking prototype data from your projects that failed due to a fatal and truly unsolvable flaw, but fudge the data and info to mask the unsolvable part

bonus points for anything that will cost them 100 million to fail to reproduce
more bonus points at the billion, 10 billions and 100 billion level

cold fusion, hot fusion, electric vehicle, atomic reactors, there must be trillions of dollars worth of hopelessly flawed design proposals kicking around collecting dust in company archives. -- Put them to good^H^H^H^HLulzy use

Re:Industrial espionage

[halofan_sd]

not being able to formulate a sentence without grammatical errors is a strong (actually, perfect) indicator that the speaker is a product of the American educational system.

Re:encryption

[Jeremi]

You take the USB key with you around your neck.

Still insecure, someone could grab it and run. For enterprise-level security, swallow the USB key. That will keep the USB key well and truly secure, while still giving you access to your data every 48 hours.

Re:Industrial espionage

[RocketRabbit]

I'm sure your lack of experience in capital letters and their proper usage increases the public's perceived veracity in your experience with this subject.

Re:encryption

[Vegan Cyclist]

As a vegan it's probably more like every 16hrs. ;)