Securing your tech in China
 

Anyone hear about any special tips/tricks to protect your computers/phones/bberrys from prying eyes while in China?

I'm going to be heading over for the olympics, and have seen some news articles warning people about Chinese intelligence hacking into people's stuff

1) Lock your device - always. Add a PIN protection to your SIM card and enable password protection on your phone
2) If you carry something like an iPhone, keep it in a nondescript case
3) Dump the white iPod headphone - nobody needs to know you have an iPod
4) Don't use open hotspots, and if you, pay for a VPN service
5) Never, ever logon to Ebay, Paypal, bank services or anything else you don't want to share, unless it's on your OWN pc, and on a secure connection. Keysniffers are everywhere in the world.
6) Don't use your primary email address on your phone. If someone DOES find it, they could be changing your Paypal email address in a few minutes. Use a disposable addres. If possible, use Gmail and use their account information feature in the bottom of the window to check for weird account access.
7) If you are carrying files you don't want to share, add them to a Truecrypt file and don't name the encrypted file "top secret files".

FWIW; these tips don't just apply to China, they are applicable everywhere in the world. I wouldn't be too afraid of Chinese intelligence, it's the common scammer you need to worry about.

There's virtually nothing you can do to genuinely protect your machines or your data from the VERY prying eyes of the Chinese Government (and I have no doubt they will likely be engaging in maximum levels of data 'collection' for the next few weeks) once in China. If the Chinese authorities want to have a look at whatever info. you have, they can and will take that look basically no matter what you do, and the Chinese have numerous ways of doing so without your ever knowing.

Bottom line -- with sensitive commercial or other information that may be of interest to ANY foreign government, keep it in your home country or else don't expect to keep it secret once you're overseas.

However, ScottC's advice is spot-on as to minimizing risk from your run-of-the-mill scammers and petty thieves.

If you data is encrypted, shorting of beating you to death for keyfiles the Chinese are not going to get it.

Not quite. Data encryption won't do much good in guarding data displayed on the screen of a laptop in a hotel room, for instance.
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Because there is certainly no way that they have the resources to perform a brute force attack if they want the data badly enough. :rolleyes:

It is safer than not if encrypted, but there is certainly no reason to believe that encryption - even good encryption that is well implemented - is impenetrable.

Nothing a hood won't solve. Unless you think they've got the bedsheets themselves wired with fiber optic cameras.

The Chinese, unless they've had a breakthru in parallel processing or quantum computing, cannot brute force encryption any faster than anyone else. If anyone wants to brute force my stuff, they obviously want it more than I want to keep it encrypted. I'm not losing sleep about the prospect.

Well implemented encryption can be virtually impenetrable, if you one-time it.

However, the Chinese are no more or less likely (or able) to get data from a well managed laptop (for instance) than any other government, short of beating the keys out of you. Serious.

If you really want a secure laptop have your IT people set you up with a VPN connection to a remote machine and use your laptop as a terminal to manipulate the other machine.

That way all of your files and data are on a remote machine and your laptop is just an empty shell.

But they are more likely than many other governments to beat the keys out of you.

:D:eek::o:(

If they got into the Pentagon, you are no match for them!!!!!!!

Buy a throw away phone. Take a clean used laptop. Don't go anywhere with sensitive data. Get the strongest Firewall, virus protection and spyware programs that you can find.

Change Passwords before you go and immediately when you get on the plane back home.

A friend of mine, reformats and reinstalls Windows every time he returns from China. He also opens a throw away email acct that becomes the only one he uses when there..Has all mail forwarded to throw-away. He doesn't trust anyone in China when it come to IT.

As has been said many times in news...Nothing is secure in China.

Meh, that says more about the Pentagon and their poor security than the skills of the Chinese.

I think just the normal security protection will work anywhere as you travel. I don't think the Chinese agents would pry into your info unless they have a reason to.

I never said they were. But if they want to brute-force attack it they can. And they certainly have resources to throw at the problem.

This will provide zero protection against a surreptitiously installed keylogger.

In reality, the Chinese (and most others) don't care about your data. And if they want it then they want it badly enough that they'll invest the time and effort to get it. But generally speaking they almost certainly could not care less.

I agree, and I'm curious where all this suspicion of the Chinese comes from. If I were traveling with sensitive data, I wouldn't trust the Chinese more or less than any other government.

Industrial espionage is everywhere, but I think most of it is done remotely and not by secret agents trying to infiltrate your hotel room.

I guess it depends on who you are. ;)