4 ms·
I agree with the general sentiment of your post. There is an undeniable national security interest in maintaining control over telecommunications backbones. >
by cletus 5y ago
I agree with the general sentiment of your post. There is an undeniable national security interest in maintaining control over telecommunications backbones.
> There is a reason China and Russia both have their own GPS alternative.
As does the EU (ie Galileo).
> There is probably no good reason to distrust Huawei.
Here I disagree. Chinese companies are extensions of the state and tools for domestic and foreign policy to a degree that Western companies simply aren't. China's massive censorship policy doesn't exactly instill confidence in the principles of openness or independence either for either the Chinese government or the companies that enable these policies.
- londons_explore 5y ago> to a degree that Western companies simply aren't. NSA paid RSA Security $10 million in a secret deal to use Dual_EC_DRBG as the default in the RSA BSAFE cryptography library[1] Juniper routers had an apparently deliberate Dual EC backdoor allowing VPN traffic to be decrypted.[2] I'd say that there is probably more evidence of the west putting state-level backdoors in things than there is of China doing so. (although there may be sampling bias in this!) [1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-rsa-idUSBRE9BJ1C220131220 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-rsa-idUSBRE9... [2]: https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/376.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/376.pdf
- monetus 5y agoI still resent room 641a, and that is relatively tame compared to what is happening now. Sampling bias is probably present though as well. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Room_641A_exterior.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Room_641...
- op00to 5y agoThere’s more evidence of everything in the west because of the openness of governments compared to China. China isn’t responding to FOIA requests all that much these days.
- ectopod 5y agoWestern backdoors were not uncovered through FOIA requests either. Huawei kit has been extensively analysed by GCHQ. They found nothing untoward.
- ravel-bar-foo 5y ago> Huawei kit has been extensively analysed by GCHQ. They found nothing untoward. That's not true. GCHQ looked at source that was provided and found many unpatched vulns, and then found that the firmware binaries were not matching the source that was provided (with a single exception), so only Hwawei really knows what their devices do.
- londons_explore 5y ago> They found nothing untoward. I don't believe this. Nearly anything complex and networked, after a few months investigation by a good security professional, will have a good number of exploits found. These could be plain old bugs, or they could be planted backdoors. (usually indistinguishable) Even after months of effort, there is a high probability there remain undiscovered security issues (either deliberate or accidental) that more effort would have found. For that reason, I don't believe any claim when they say "nah, we couldn't find anything". They either didn't look, or don't want to reveal what they found.
- ectopod 5y agoThey assessed the kit to ensure it was safe to install on British networks, they announced it was safe, and the kit was installed. Further, when America's anti-Huawei panic started HMG were looking for an excuse to ban Huawei kit. If problems had been found it's likely they would have been mentioned.
- Spooky23 5y agoThey reported nothing untoward. Unless you have access to secret information and are for some reason burning your life down on HN, you have no idea what they found or didn’t find.
- simonh 5y agoHow many journalists in China are you aware of that have investigated Chinese state interference in their technology companies, and reported on it? Yes western intelligence agencies do make use of western technology companies from time to time. I still think it's obvious that China is willing to go much, much further in the control it exercises. In fact exercising complete control over all aspects of business is official party doctrine.
- throwawaygal7 5y agoThis type of comments... The data you show isn't proof of anything other than ineptitude of western agencies and the freedom of the press in the west. Go look for ICMB and warhead leaks, you'll always find better and more extensive documentation for NATO weapon systems. Does this mean the former communist block had no such weapons? No. It has to do with freedom of press and the legal system in the west making plans and docs public knowledge compared to a pretty locked down system in Russia and china.