5 ms·

I have to ask a dumb question here. Lets say that a piece of equipment was installed, with a secret backdoor chip to send data to another country. Surely the un

I have to ask a dumb question here. Lets say that a piece of equipment was installed, with a secret backdoor chip to send data to another country. Surely the unexpected network flow would be detected outbound and investigated? I mean, if my firewall detects outbound traffic to weirdness.com, its going to stop it and alert, because weirdness is not in the predefined envelope of expected places to send things to. I feel I must be missing something big.

pyinstallwoes 4y ago
Exfiltration can be masked in any channel with a signal. So the exfiltration can be hard to detect when it is only sending a bit every 23 minutes for example. Longer time is harder to trace. Think of very intelligent algorithms using multiple channels for exfiltration.
- leaflets2 4y ago
  > the predefined envelope of expected places to send things to. Also, in some cases the expected destinations have been hacked already, I'm guessing > multiple channels for exfiltration If they can send via wifi, it could be almost impossible to detect? So much noise in the wifi space?
  - pyinstallwoes 4y ago
    Let alone voltage leaks, vibrations of your window, your electronics, switching, it's all signal.
- DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
  If it only sends a bit every 23 minutes, the bitrate will be so low that nothing of interest can be sent. These sorts of vague accusations have been made against Huawei for several years now, but to date, no one has ever produced a shred of evidence that Huawei installs backdoors on its telecommunications equipment. Huawei devices are installed all over the place, and it's not as if there's been a lack of scrutiny. In the UK, Huawei even submitted to regular audits by British intelligence, and nothing was ever found. Every claim that's been made has turned out to be along the lines of, "We discovered that Huawei uses industry-standard tools to update firmware on its devices, and the network operators have the ability to oversee the updates." The accusations are pure assertions, backed up by a general suspicion of everything Chinese. This really began with Trump, and it's been sad to watch Western countries fall ever deeper into paranoia and hatred towards China. It's Yellow Peril v2.0.
  - richbell 4y ago
    > The accusations are pure assertions, backed up by a general suspicion of everything Chinese. > This really began with Trump, and it's been sad to watch Western countries fall ever deeper into paranoia and hatred towards China. It's Yellow Peril v2.0. Canadians have been skeptical of Huawei since at least 2012. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-nortel-exec-warns-against-working-with-huawei-1.1137006 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-nortel-exec-warns-ag... I think it's a reasonable security posture to treat technology from a country you don't trust with suspicion. Especially when they have long history of hostile espionage. - https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/dnd-may-abandon-1b-move-to-former-nortel-site-because-of-surveillance-bugs-1.1477766 https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/dnd-may-abandon-1b-move... - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-lab-security-experts-1.6059097 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-lab-securit... - https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/wanping-zheng-china-comapny-court-space-1.6381923 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/wanping-zheng-china-comapny...
    - ncann 4y ago
      If you don't want to use stuffs from a country you viewed as adversary in your infra, government, army etc. that's totally reasonable, but just man up and say that out loud. Having these vague accusations thrown around like "Huawei phone is spying on you, and so is other Chinese brands like Xiaomi, so don't use them" is honestly just insulting as a customer when there's not a single shred of concrete evidence that something nefarious is going on.
      - richbell 4y ago
        > you don't want to use stuffs from a country you viewed as adversary in your infra, government, army etc. that's totally reasonable, but just man up and say that out loud. Having these vague accusations thrown around like "Huawei phone is spying on you, and so is other Chinese brands like Xiaomi, so don't use them" is honestly just insulting as a customer when there's not a single shred of concrete evidence that something nefarious is going on. People are saying both of those things, for the same reason. Do you not think that having unprecedented access to the data of civilians poses a risk to national security? Modern technology (smart phones, apps, websites, etc.) collects a terrifying amount of information on people. It also exerts a tremendous amount of influence, be it Facebook or China. I also think that writing off the concern as "vague accusations" misses the point. As the current top comment points out[0], it's nearly impossible to verify what a device is doing. And even if you were to somehow do a complete software audit, malicious behaviour could be patched in at any time in the future. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32201044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32201044

pyinstallwoes 4y ago

Exfiltration can be masked in any channel with a signal. So the exfiltration can be hard to detect when it is only sending a bit every 23 minutes for example. Longer time is harder to trace. Think of very intelligent algorithms using multiple channels for exfiltration.

leaflets2 4y ago
> the predefined envelope of expected places to send things to. Also, in some cases the expected destinations have been hacked already, I'm guessing > multiple channels for exfiltration If they can send via wifi, it could be almost impossible to detect? So much noise in the wifi space?
- pyinstallwoes 4y ago
  Let alone voltage leaks, vibrations of your window, your electronics, switching, it's all signal.
DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
If it only sends a bit every 23 minutes, the bitrate will be so low that nothing of interest can be sent. These sorts of vague accusations have been made against Huawei for several years now, but to date, no one has ever produced a shred of evidence that Huawei installs backdoors on its telecommunications equipment. Huawei devices are installed all over the place, and it's not as if there's been a lack of scrutiny. In the UK, Huawei even submitted to regular audits by British intelligence, and nothing was ever found. Every claim that's been made has turned out to be along the lines of, "We discovered that Huawei uses industry-standard tools to update firmware on its devices, and the network operators have the ability to oversee the updates." The accusations are pure assertions, backed up by a general suspicion of everything Chinese. This really began with Trump, and it's been sad to watch Western countries fall ever deeper into paranoia and hatred towards China. It's Yellow Peril v2.0.
- richbell 4y ago
  > The accusations are pure assertions, backed up by a general suspicion of everything Chinese. > This really began with Trump, and it's been sad to watch Western countries fall ever deeper into paranoia and hatred towards China. It's Yellow Peril v2.0. Canadians have been skeptical of Huawei since at least 2012. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-nortel-exec-warns-against-working-with-huawei-1.1137006 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-nortel-exec-warns-ag... I think it's a reasonable security posture to treat technology from a country you don't trust with suspicion. Especially when they have long history of hostile espionage. - https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/dnd-may-abandon-1b-move-to-former-nortel-site-because-of-surveillance-bugs-1.1477766 https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/dnd-may-abandon-1b-move... - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-lab-security-experts-1.6059097 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-lab-securit... - https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/wanping-zheng-china-comapny-court-space-1.6381923 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/wanping-zheng-china-comapny...
  - ncann 4y ago
    If you don't want to use stuffs from a country you viewed as adversary in your infra, government, army etc. that's totally reasonable, but just man up and say that out loud. Having these vague accusations thrown around like "Huawei phone is spying on you, and so is other Chinese brands like Xiaomi, so don't use them" is honestly just insulting as a customer when there's not a single shred of concrete evidence that something nefarious is going on.
    - richbell 4y ago
      > you don't want to use stuffs from a country you viewed as adversary in your infra, government, army etc. that's totally reasonable, but just man up and say that out loud. Having these vague accusations thrown around like "Huawei phone is spying on you, and so is other Chinese brands like Xiaomi, so don't use them" is honestly just insulting as a customer when there's not a single shred of concrete evidence that something nefarious is going on. People are saying both of those things, for the same reason. Do you not think that having unprecedented access to the data of civilians poses a risk to national security? Modern technology (smart phones, apps, websites, etc.) collects a terrifying amount of information on people. It also exerts a tremendous amount of influence, be it Facebook or China. I also think that writing off the concern as "vague accusations" misses the point. As the current top comment points out[0], it's nearly impossible to verify what a device is doing. And even if you were to somehow do a complete software audit, malicious behaviour could be patched in at any time in the future. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32201044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32201044