Yep. Not surprised this is happening somewhere in the world. We predicted stuff like this would happen in crypto back in ~2013.

Pretty hard to protect against. So many steps between manufacturer and you. Shipping companies are an attack vector. Even a manufacturer’s physical store front could be compromised more cheaply than their manufacturing factories.

Need auditable manufacturing (cameras recording assembly?).

And need some sort of tamper-proof device supply-chain structure.

Maybe a smart device case, that only the manufacturer can seal, can be cheaply verified by anyone, and any tampering breaks the seal.

Like a modern wax seal.