back to article Infected Chinese inventory scanners ships off logistics intel

A Chinese manufacturer has been accused of implanting malware that steals supply chain intelligence in its hand-held scanner firmware. Security firm TrapX says infected scanners have been sold to eight unnamed firms including a large robotics company. Variants of the malware broke into enterprise resource planning platforms …

  1. cyke1

    Stuff like this doesn't happen less its an inside job, they can deny it all they want but chances that a rogue outside hacker that gets this kinda axx are insanely remote. They would need source access and time to modify the source and make sure it work's.

  2. JMiles

    Language?

    "Infected scanners once connected to one firm's wireless network attacked its corporate network via the SMB protocol, morphing to infect using the RADMIN protocol more than nine servers after it was initially blocked by a firewall."

    The worst sentence construction award goes to this 'journalist'. I know The Reg are a bit laid back when it comes to their (ab)use of the Engish language but a school kid would get sent to the head for this effort here.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Holmes

      Re: Language?

      El Reg outsources the actual writing to China, they are just responsible for gathering news from other sites.

  3. Arachnoid

    Maybe the Reg is infected

    By a dyslexic dwarf ........er short person..... algorithm.......

  4. John Tserkezis

    Brands and models of kit infected would be nice. Even just pictures, because names can change.

  5. razorfishsl

    A lot of kit from China suppliers is deliberately infected.

    Tablets, phones, flash sticks and even the latest set top boxes, sometimes it is the supplier other times it is engineers working in the company who have been paid by 'outside' interests.

    You would be quite shocked at what is available as infected kit, so much so that there was a recent 'expose' by a HK TV company on Chinese electronics and the purveyors of this product.

    1. Crazy Operations Guy

      [Citation needed]

  6. Gene Cash Silver badge
    FAIL

    "unnamed accused Chinese manufacturer"

    That's useless then.

  7. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
    WTF?

    scanners and website-hosted software

    Why would a bar-code scanner need internet access to "website-hosted software"?

    1. Aslan

      Re: scanners and website-hosted software

      A useful barcode scanner these days is a PDA with a pistol grip mount, a touch screen and wifi. It ties into the inventory system, and can access stock levels and locations, deliver messages, clock workers in and out, navigate the warehouse. They're pretty amazing tools. If you can't trust your suppliers who can you trust?

  8. southen bastard

    Simple security, recieve product, turn box over, check manufacturing coutry, china? Bin.

    Easy

  9. Alan Brown Silver badge

    Embedded WindowsXP device

    No worries about that then...

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like