As one can see clearly from my posts, I think the entire thing is logistically impossible, as well as technically infeasible; Let's lay down the various "claims"/facts made here:
1.Many printers/scanners/etc are manufactured in China. This is true.
2.The claim is that, during manufacture, the various ROM programs in the device are modified.
3.the intent of this modification is to take control of the host computer to send... data, of what nature, I don't know. Not particularly relevant, I suppose. One can assume it's stuff you wouldn't want sent.
4.the Driver software is also subject to these changes.
1.) While it is true that printers/scanners/ various other peripherals are manufactured in China, It's also true that a number of PCs are as well, as well as almost any sort of electronic device, from digital cameras to cellphones to camcorders to digital picture frames. Surely a Printer, All-in-one or otherwise is one of the least adequate peripherals to take over for this particular task?
2.) The fact is, as I noted previously, the factories are owned by the companies, who are based in the U.S, and the actual ROM chip code is written by programmers
in the U.S (or Canada, or wherever the company is based) If a secret Agent, or whomever, was to infiltrate the factory and change the chip code somehow, that would be filed as a defect during QA testing when the ROM chips are checksummed and compared to the original code as written in the U.S. Of course if the person in the U.S is some sort of secret Chinese government spy or something we've sort of left the realm of a purely technological attack to one of simple espionage.
3.) As I also noted, the USB specification does not allow a device to do anything but communicate with the host computer; there is no way for a scanner, or any device on a USB controller to "take control of the host network" without some sort of software support, which brings me to number 4:
4.) If indeed the software driver/package was tampered (and somehow got through the Rigorous QA designed to prevent the deployment of viruses to consumers, much as with any software deployment nowadays), why would it need to be doing this in a partnership with the scanner itself? What does the scanner add to the equation? Obviously if they can simply change the driver package they can simply make it have a virus that sends this "data" (whatever it may be) without the vestigial and wholly unnecessary step of communicating with the printer.
And all of this rather abruptly ignores the rigorous testing almost any electronic device has to go through to be approved for import, or even export; it ignores the rather robust system in place in the various developed countries to prevent exactly what is being described.
I have no idea who you are and you could be Bill Gates or a teenager computer geek megalomaniac.
Either way, it's irrelevant. I could also be a secret communist spy trying to cover up my countries secret underground operations. But making assumptions about my motive don't serve to invalidate the technical reasons I've given that the methodology that you have described is infeasible.
You may persue this matter from other sources if interested.
I believe I will. Seems I'm not the only one who feels this way. Also, seems the issue is around not just printers and scanners, but the actual computer. That invalidates the whole USB spec thing but doesn't serve to disregard the strict QA that the products go through; with a computer the motherboard, CPU, and all the logic circuits are supposed to be there. you can't just introduce a errant chip and have it go unnoticed. And that's not to mention the fact that such an IC would be situated essentially with the chipset, meaning that it would have to be intimately connected to the network hardware in order for the chinese government to activate it remotely as it is claimed in many articles/blogs that seem to have bought the entire thing.
Either way,
this article explains why the whole thing is nonsense from a technical and critical thinking perspective far better then I ever could: