There's another Chinese-manufactured product - joining the likes of TikTok, cars and semiconductors - that poses a national security risk to Americans: electronic locks, such as those used in safes.
In a letter to National Counterintelligence and Security Center director Michael Casey, US senator Ron Wyden urged the White House threat-intel arm to sound the alarm on commercial safes and locks.
Most commercially available safes include manufacturer reset codes for their locks to help consumers if they lose or forget the code they set.
Government agencies and law enforcement can request access to these codes - usually via a warrant or subpoena, and ostensibly to help investigate a crime or address some sort of national security concern.
We should point out that privacy advocates beg to differ, and aren't fans of Uncle Sam using backdoors to snoop on Americans - but that's not Wyden's concern at the moment.
SECURAM did not immediately respond to The Register's request for comment.
The US Department of Defense is well aware of the issue, according to Wyden, who cites a November 8 email from the DoD calling manufacturer reset codes a security threat.
DoD also provided my staff with the attached white paper on December 15, 2023, revealing that US government standards for approved locks do not explicitly reference these backdoor codes in order to avoid tipping off the public to their existence.
In short, the government has opted to keep the public in the dark about this vulnerability, after quietly protecting government agencies from it.
The Department of Defense did not respond to The Register's inquiries.
This Cyber News was published on go.theregister.com. Publication date: Fri, 15 Mar 2024 00:13:05 +0000