4 ms·

I don't have any non-public insight as to how intelligence agencies operate, so this is pure conjecture on my part: If I was I was a intelligence agency in a c

I don't have any non-public insight as to how intelligence agencies operate, so this is pure conjecture on my part: If I was I was a intelligence agency in a country where there is a risk of blow-back, like in Europe or the US, I might prefer to use exploits. That way you haven't compromised your own country infrastructure (as much) and the risk of leaks is much lower since you dont have to work with an outside entity. A government agency forcing a domestic company to add backdoors, looks much worse if it gets out, then an agency using existing bugs. If I'm a Intelligence agency in a country that doesn't care about blow-back like China or Russia, why bother finding and using an exploit, when you can call up the vendor and have them design the system with your use-case in mind? You dont have to worry about someone fixing the bug you have spent man years making exploitable, and you can make sure the backdoor can only be used by you. Its way more convenient and cost effective.

rocqua 6y ago
> why bother finding and using an exploit, when you can call up the vendor and have them design the system with your use-case in mind? China is now suffering fron Huawei blowback in quite a few western countries.
- quelsolaar 6y ago
  True. But not anywhere near as bad as in a western country. You don't see Xi Jinping being eviscerated in Chinese media, or being forced to testify in front of congress. Also telcos dont really care, and will continue to buy Huawei equipment if prices are low enough, unless governments outright ban them from doing so. I think Huawei, would have experienced almost the same blowback even if they didn't have any backdoor. Western intelligence experts, would have advised against using Huawei without any evidence of backdoors, simply because they know they would have put in backdoors if they where in the position of china, and they assume the Chinese aren't incompetent. The blow back also serves a political purposes for everyone around. Western politicians/military gets to say "We need to protect ourselves against scary China!". And China's propaganda machine gets to say "Look at the terrible racist west treating us unfairly, by accusing us of bad things without evidence!".

rocqua 6y ago

> why bother finding and using an exploit, when you can call up the vendor and have them design the system with your use-case in mind? China is now suffering fron Huawei blowback in quite a few western countries.

quelsolaar 6y ago
True. But not anywhere near as bad as in a western country. You don't see Xi Jinping being eviscerated in Chinese media, or being forced to testify in front of congress. Also telcos dont really care, and will continue to buy Huawei equipment if prices are low enough, unless governments outright ban them from doing so. I think Huawei, would have experienced almost the same blowback even if they didn't have any backdoor. Western intelligence experts, would have advised against using Huawei without any evidence of backdoors, simply because they know they would have put in backdoors if they where in the position of china, and they assume the Chinese aren't incompetent. The blow back also serves a political purposes for everyone around. Western politicians/military gets to say "We need to protect ourselves against scary China!". And China's propaganda machine gets to say "Look at the terrible racist west treating us unfairly, by accusing us of bad things without evidence!".