http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_41/b4103034193886.htm By Brian Grow, Chi-Chu Tschang, Cliff Edwards and Brian Burnsed BusinessWeek October 2, 2008 The American military faces a growing threat of potentially fatal equipment failure - and even foreign espionage - because of counterfeit computer components used in warplanes, ships, and communication networks. Fake microchips flow from unruly bazaars in rural China to dubious kitchen-table brokers in the U.S. and into complex weapons. Senior Pentagon officials publicly play down the danger, but government documents, as well as interviews with insiders, suggest possible connections between phony parts and breakdowns. In November 2005, a confidential Pentagon-industry program that tracks counterfeits issued an alert that "BAE Systems experienced field failures," meaning military equipment malfunctions, which the large defense contractor traced to fake microchips. Chips are the tiny electronic circuits found in computers and other gear. The alert from the Government-Industry Data Exchange Program (GIDEP), reviewed by BusinessWeek (MHP), said two batches of chips "were never shipped" by their supposed manufacturer, Maxim Integrated Products in Sunnyvale, Calif. "Maxim considers these parts to be counterfeit," the alert states. (In response to BusinessWeek's questions, BAE said the alert had referred erroneously to field failures. The company denied there were any malfunctions.) In a separate incident last January, a chip falsely identified as having been made by Xicor, now a unit of Intersil in Milpitas, Calif., was discovered in the flight computer of an F-15 fighter jet at Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins, Ga. People familiar with the situation say technicians were repairing the F-15 at the time. Special Agent Terry Mosher of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations confirms that the 409th Supply Chain Management Squadron eventually found four counterfeit Xicor chips. [...] __________________________________________________ Register now for HITBSecConf2008 - Malaysia! With a new triple-track conference featuring 4 keynote speakers and over 35 international experts, this is the largest network security event in Asia and the Middle East! http://conference.hackinthebox.org/hitbsecconf2008kl/Received on Sun Oct 05 2008 - 23:21:09 PDT
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