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Comment by philwelch | Hacker News Reader

Your phone was manufactured by a front for a foreign intelligence service. It was never secure.

American-manufactured devices are probably equally as infiltrated by American foreign intelligence services. Hence why they don't just use a standard Linux distro with open source firmware.

There is no proof of this, but there is tons of proof that China state funds Huawei and has the intent of espionage and IP theft.

There is no proof at all. There are a lot accusations, but US government cannot provide any evidences to back them up.

The opposite actually

US government spying has nothing to do with why manufacturers don’t “just use a standard Linux distro with open source firmware”. There are no GNU/Linux (as in, with the GNU userland) distros that work well enough on phones to compete with Android and open source firmware removes some competitive advantage around things like image processing.

Even if it was true that American phone companies are infiltrated by American intelligence services, you have to ask yourself which government you trust more. As a New Zealander, I think there are very good reasons to trust the US government a lot more.

Heck, if you look at where Chinese officials try to stash their money and their families, it's clear they trust Western countries a lot more too.

> As a New Zealander, I think there are very good reasons to trust the US government a lot more.

As an EU citizen, idk, China seems more locally focused, the U.S reaches everywhere. Speaking of NZ, the whole Kim Dotcom situation makes it look like a U.S.vassal state, honestly.

Hardly, look at what the Chinese are doing in Africa and the "Silk Road" initiative and how they load down countries with borrowing so they can come in and clean up 10 years later.

Of course I trust China more. China never militarily supported a coup in my country.

Just to play devil's advocate, do you have any citations for that statement?

No. Although Huawei did do some shady shit, like come up with a bonus scheme based on how much IP/market intelligence their employees could "acquire" from their competitors.

I'd hardly presume Huawei is a front for a foreign intelligence service, but their software for cellular basestations is extremely vulnerable (hundreds of different vulnerable versions of OpenSSL sprinkled through) and they still can't be bothered to use version control, despite committing to address both issues back in 2012: https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-huawei-bri...

Huawei's products are vulnerable by default, anyone can look up the applicable CVEs and run the proof of concept code for said CVE to pop a shell. China doesn't have exclusive access :)

No, I think it is, that would explain a lot of things - like how can they make/sell premium mobile phones for less? If the Chinese govt is paying you (say) $100/user to plant a back door, that would certainly help.

Remember that Huawei settled out of court to the 'allegation' that they copied Cisco's source code.

So, are Facebook a front for the CIA?

Personally I would prefer it to be a foreign government rather than the one in charge of the country I reside in...

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