Hey Guest!
Hey - did you know if you click on the title of a thread it will take you to the first unread post since you last visited that thread?
but were afraid to ask: 
STOP!! Never post your email address in open forums. Bots can "harvest" your email! If you must share your email use a Private Message or use the 
smilie in place of the real @
Pretty Please - add it to our Events forum(s) and add to the calendar! >> 
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In case any of you didn't know it, the Chinese are engaged in a Cyber war against the US and other western countries. They actually have an Army of government-sanctioned hackers intent on compromising as many systems as they can for nefarious purposes (this is not open to debate, I know it for a fact). Of course, high-profile government, financial and military systems are their primary targets; they also seek to exploit other systems for a variety of purposes. I can speak from personal experience. Whenever there is a break-in attempt on my server, the IP of the intruder is automatically added to my firewall after a certain number of failed attempts. When I get the reports, I trace the IPs and 90 percent of the time, they originate in China (with countries in the middle-east making up a lot of the others). Anyway, the following is an excerpt from an unclassified Intelligence Report I received which is very disturbing, especially if you own on of these Maxtor hard drives:
<span style='font-size: 17pt'><span style="color: #FF6600"><span style='font-family: Arial'>Maxtor Drives Contained Password-Stealing Trojans</span></span></span>
<span style='font-size: 11pt'><span style='font-family: Arial'>Department of Homeland Security, 13 Nov 07: Seagate Technology LLC has shipped Maxtor disk drives that contain Trojan horses that upload data to a pair of Chinese Web sites, the Taiwanese government’s security service warned this weekend. The Investigation Bureau said it suspected mainland China’s authorities were responsible for planting the malware on the drives at the factory. “The bureau said that the method of attack was unusual, adding that it suspected Chinese authorities were involved,” a story posted by the English-language Taipei Times reported Sunday. Seagate confirmed Monday that some Maxtor Basics 3200 drives were infected out of the box, but the company said it had no proof that the Chinese government was involved.
According to the newspaper, about 1,800 Seagate-made drives left a Thailand facility with a pair of Trojan horses preinstalled. The two Trojans, said the Investigation Bureau, “phone home” to a pair of Web sites hosted in Beijing and report all data recorded on the compromised drive. Seagate, however, countered that the only data captured by the on- disk Trojans and sent to the Chinese Web sites were game-related passwords. Internet records show that both sites -- https://www.nice8.org and https://www.we168.org -- were registered with XinNet.cn, one of China’s largest domain registrars. Much of the registration information, however, including the contact name and mailing address, appears to be bogus. The Investigation Bureau identified the infected drives as 500GB models and has demanded that the Taiwanese distributor pull all units from shelves. Of the 1,800 drives reportedly malware-equipped, 1,500 have been removed from the sales channel. The remainder had already been sold. For those customers Seagate will post a 60-day trial version of Kaspersky Labs’ antivirus software on its Web site.</span></span>
<span style='font-size: 17pt'><span style="color: #FF6600"><span style='font-family: Arial'>Maxtor Drives Contained Password-Stealing Trojans</span></span></span>
<span style='font-size: 11pt'><span style='font-family: Arial'>Department of Homeland Security, 13 Nov 07: Seagate Technology LLC has shipped Maxtor disk drives that contain Trojan horses that upload data to a pair of Chinese Web sites, the Taiwanese government’s security service warned this weekend. The Investigation Bureau said it suspected mainland China’s authorities were responsible for planting the malware on the drives at the factory. “The bureau said that the method of attack was unusual, adding that it suspected Chinese authorities were involved,” a story posted by the English-language Taipei Times reported Sunday. Seagate confirmed Monday that some Maxtor Basics 3200 drives were infected out of the box, but the company said it had no proof that the Chinese government was involved.
According to the newspaper, about 1,800 Seagate-made drives left a Thailand facility with a pair of Trojan horses preinstalled. The two Trojans, said the Investigation Bureau, “phone home” to a pair of Web sites hosted in Beijing and report all data recorded on the compromised drive. Seagate, however, countered that the only data captured by the on- disk Trojans and sent to the Chinese Web sites were game-related passwords. Internet records show that both sites -- https://www.nice8.org and https://www.we168.org -- were registered with XinNet.cn, one of China’s largest domain registrars. Much of the registration information, however, including the contact name and mailing address, appears to be bogus. The Investigation Bureau identified the infected drives as 500GB models and has demanded that the Taiwanese distributor pull all units from shelves. Of the 1,800 drives reportedly malware-equipped, 1,500 have been removed from the sales channel. The remainder had already been sold. For those customers Seagate will post a 60-day trial version of Kaspersky Labs’ antivirus software on its Web site.</span></span>
