Traveling Light in a Time of Digital Thievery

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

Forwarded from: Simon Taplin <simon (at) simontaplin.net>

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/technology/electronic-security-a-worry-in-an-age-of-digital-espionage.html?pagewanted=1&ref=technology

By NICOLE PERLROTH
The New York Times
February 10, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO -- When Kenneth G. Lieberthal, a China expert at the 
Brookings Institution, travels to that country, he follows a routine 
that seems straight from a spy film.

He leaves his cellphone and laptop at home and instead brings “loaner” 
devices, which he erases before he leaves the United States and wipes 
clean the minute he returns. In China, he disables Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, 
never lets his phone out of his sight and, in meetings, not only turns 
off his phone but also removes the battery, for fear his microphone 
could be turned on remotely. He connects to the Internet only through an 
encrypted, password-protected channel, and copies and pastes his 
password from a USB thumb drive. He never types in a password directly, 
because, he said, “the Chinese are very good at installing key-logging 
software on your laptop.”

What might have once sounded like the behavior of a paranoid is now 
standard operating procedure for officials at American government 
agencies, research groups and companies that do business in China and 
Russia — like Google, the State Department and the Internet security 
giant McAfee. Digital espionage in these countries, security experts 
say, is a real and growing threat — whether in pursuit of confidential 
government information or corporate trade secrets.

“If a company has significant intellectual property that the Chinese and 
Russians are interested in, and you go over there with mobile devices, 
your devices will get penetrated,” said Joel F. Brenner, formerly the 
top counterintelligence official in the office of the director of 
national intelligence.

[...]

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