I was eating lunch and reading an old magazine that was lying around.  There was an article talking about the digital picture frames infected with a virus that Best Buy was selling a few months ago, and a reminder about the iPods that were sold last year with a virus on them…

It got me wondering - we all assume that the electronics we purchase and rely on are “clean” and don’t come infected with malware out of the box.  More than that, these same electronics that we rely on are typically manufactured overseas… 

This got me wondering - Would it be all that hard for a government or organization to insert some sort of malicious code into the equipment used in the manufacturing process?  In particular how hard would it be for that code to be injected at a point in the process that would cause it to be replicated onto every device produced?

Think about it - by injecting a malicious program into a device, especially if it’s a sophisticated and difficult to detect program - a hostile government or organization could cause havoc with the devices that we rely on and even gain access to all kinds of sensative or private data…