Hardware backdoors are hard to detect if designed, they look like minor design or manufacturing fault and remain latent until activated by remote transmission.
The International intelligence agencies suspect that Chinese companies like ZTE, Huawei, Lenovo spies for the Chinese government.
July 29, 2013, America, Canada, UK, New Zealand & Australian Spy agencies reportedly have a long-standing ban since the mid-2000 on Lenovo PCs. It's due to backdoor vulnerabilities discovered during testing sessions conducted on the hardware and firmware qualification on Lenovo chips and found malicious modifications to circuitry. It could allow an attacker to remotely access the computers without the users’ knowledge. The agencies fear that Chinese cyber espionage would steal intellectual property and sensitive information from private businesses and government offices.
While there are no specific classified details of any corruption, the Lenovo company also said, that ”its products have been found time and time again to be reliable and secure by enterprise and public sector customers and welcome engagement to ensure that company meeting their security needs. The great concern of Western agencies is probably motivated by their intense activity in the surveillance field, the knowledge of methods for surveillance and spying is triggering fear in the work of opponents.”
During this time the industry and United States Congress recognizes far-reaching damage and shown major concerns about the threat from the hardware devices and software development from China which includes electronic eavesdropping of US business and IT environments.
The compromised hardware or software would hold systems at risk for years to come and China continues to represent a formidable offensive threat to the world-at-large.
December 07, 2014 Lenovo Group Limited, the leading Personal Computer brand in China and across Asia, announced a definitive agreement to acquire IBM's Personal Computing Division.
During the Trump Administration in 2018 & 2019, the concern has become even more heightened.
