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this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2025
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My sysadmin uncle worried me about this when I was coming to China this time stating that all devices that enter the Chinese network have something on the root changed so that it calls home and even reinstalling the OS can’t fix it. I had two thoughts, one if this is possible I bet the NSA would do it does the same thing. Two, this felt like modern redscare to me.
I spoke to my university IT team and they said as long as I practiced internet safety like using a VPN this would be fine.
That said, I do see this as a valid threat. I believe using my own FOSS services over others makes this threat smaller to some degree. Encrypting everything. And when in doubt write it down on paper. The less tech you use the less this threat exists.
In a perfect world I wish I had a Linux portable device where I could manually turn off wifi and data.
Can someone with more expertise explain how this could be possible? Are you actually saying any device manufactured in China and sold within China have something changed? I don't see how this could be true if your bringing your own device from outside into China.
I'm going to guess that this is very much not true. For that to happen, every individual device would have to have an exploit that only China is aware of that gives them zero touch kernel level access where they invisibly install a rootkit that can't be flashed off. Now, if you connect to a network and it says you have to install something first in order to connect, then all bets are off. I've heard of some exploits where this could be possible for specific devices running specific versions of firmware or software, but they are exceptions that generally can't be replicated consistently in the wild.
I would say that if connected to a Chinese network, all of your traffic can be monitored, so a VPN would be heavily recommended.
It's not detailed enough to really know what they meant, but for example and if I recall correctly, Android on a phone can get rootkitted in such a way that resetting the phone will not remove what was installed. This is because Android has a "System" partition and a "User" partition. When you "reset" a phone, it only wipes the user partition in most cases, so any malware installed to the system side would be untouched.
This is why you have to be real careful if you should purchase an Android phone second hand from a private seller.
Im saying any device that is used within Chinese internet or data can have its root changed account to my uncle. As I said in my original comment I wonder if that’s possible and if it was why wouldn’t the NSA do it too. Or is it just redscare? He’s the head sysadmin for a large multi branch company BUT his field isn’t China, he got that from a colleague. So idk what to do with that info. My university has teams in China and they don’t worry about this. I decided to not worry about it.
Tin foil hat on it sounds possible and I’m sure it could be done in the US too but I am not an expert at all.
They're probably referring to rootkits that compromise the firmware of devices.