“Hackers are injecting bad codes into components at overseas manufacturing plants, planting tools to help them launch cyber attacks on the United States,” Rep. Jim Langevin told Reuters after speaking at a cyber security event in Rhode Island.

The problem affects both consumer electronics as well as corporate systems which usually store sensitive, secret and mission critical information. Even worse, tainted supply chain components are a growing threat to the US, particularly in military operations.

“Corrupted hardware and software is embedded in the supply chain,” he said. “We have a real challenge on our hands to better secure the supply chain.”

The tainted supply chain is “not something that a lot of people have thought about in the past. They should have thought about it,” says a cybersecurity expert at Roger Williams University. “What if you went on a battlefield and hit a button and everything stopped working? It’s pretty scary stuff.”

The public and private sectors are constantly under attack by hackers and as they are now able to breach via manufacturers, the US government has some serious problems on their hands, especially since most of the infected hardware to directed towards them.