Huawei calls the US intel community’s bluff | Hacker News Reader

Huawei calls the US intel community’s bluff

asiatimes.com

20 pointshoward94138 comments

It this article seriously trying to pass off "quantum encryption will be part of 5G networks" with a straight face?

I haven't seen _any_ quantum communications hardware on the market. Of any kind. For any industry. And despite that, it's ready for mass adoption in cell phones? I don't think so.

Not sure that is the argument - by my read, they expect to a quantum network as part of the network core. I cannot tell how far out of the core it would extend (definitely not down to individual mobile devices, but perhaps to individual cells?), which would be the determining factor in how much this affects global SIGINT

Please link me any product pages for hardware enabling a quantum stuff for their network core. I might have missed some revolution, but expect this to be.... "wishful thinking". At best.

There are multiple reports of using the Micius satellite to generate quantum networks. This has some marketing spin, since the satellite itself has to be trusted, but it is still an impressive achievement. As I understand, the satellite acts as the relay node. Have not looked at their publications to see hard numbers describing the approach practicality.

I totally agree that we are very, very far from a consumer (and perhaps even an enterprise) product. However, it does seem to me (based on scientific papers, news, and patent filings) that the Chinese take quantum networks seriously and are pushing hard to get a government network. IMO, this network would come with all the limits of new technology (slower than you would want, fewer guarantees, etc) but with all the advances of spending hundreds of million to be the first creating a new significant technology.

If you're aware of these points already, and still believe them to be wishful thinking, I would be curious what makes you say that

The issue is that Huawei, like any other Chinese company, is an extended branch of the government. Auditing source code doesn't change the fact that Huawei is legally obligated to turn over data to the CCP.

Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. are all extended branch of the Trump government as well. They collaborated with NSA to spy on other nations and its own people. It is a well-known fact. Google is working with the US military to weaponize AI. Amazon and Microsoft work with the military to weaponize cloud technologies.

Not even close to the same. See how Apple resisted the federal government's requests to access the San Bernardino terrorist's phone: https://www.npr.org/series/469827708/the-apple-fbi-debate-ov...

Something like this could never happen in China. Tim Cook would've be in a state prison in a matter of days.

That's nonsense. Huawei has never proven to be connected with China government either. It is a private company owned by its founder and employees. There is ZERO evidence whatsoever that Huawei has spied for China government.

Huawei has publicly stated that Ren Zhengfei holds veto powers as part of their shareholder agreement, so I'm not sure that their claimed ownership model actually translates to the same level of control that implies in the western world.

Not that ownership matters anyway. AT&T isn't owned by the US Government either, but I bet the CCP doesn't want them implementing infrastructure projects in China. Actually, we know for a fact they don't because their 'national champion' policy is well known.

There is a difference between collaborating with the government and being coerced by the government.

Wow, this reads like a CCP propaganda piece.

Once I saw that the rebuttal is "quantum communications" I just laughed.

Yes. Quantum encryption requires a fiber hard-line with polarized photons. You can't hand-wave that into a wireless network.

I suspect it's about connection to BTS or at least core network which already is often fiber.

Not out of realm of possibility but would take a long time to fully develop and deploy.

Based on the article's conclusion, I thought it was part of a funding campaign by the US R&D complex:

One solution might be to cut $60 billion or so out of the US intelligence budget and divert it to a crash R&D program to bring America up to speed in quantum communications and fifth-generation broadband, technologies in which China presently has the lead.

Haven't even read it yet and thought the same based on the title alone.

The premise of this article is a straw man and a red herring. I haven't heard anyone in the intelligence community suggest that Huawei has already implemented any back doors in their devices.

The concern is the ongoing support that is inherently necessary with networking equipment.

> I haven't heard anyone in the intelligence community suggest that Huawei has already implemented any back doors in their devices.

I'm not sure I follow you, wouldn't this then not rather imply that it only seems like a straw man if you've been led to believe that they're planning backdoors in their 5G network equipment?

The article implies that the US intelligence community has said there are back-doors; here's what I was referring to:

> Now Huawei has called the American intelligence community’s bluff. Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei offered to license his company’s technology to the West and allow Western companies to take it apart, re-write the source code, and otherwise purge it of any possible trace of Chinese hacking

...well, I thought that the official narrative was actually "Huawei spies for China". But if it's not, what is the official reason for the embargo then?

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59w49b/huawei-surveillanc...

It's not. Tense is important here. From the first sentence of your article, emphasis mine:

> American telecom companies are being pressured by the government to avoid doing business with Chinese hardware manufacturer Huawei due to concerns that the Chinese government would use Huawei devices to spy on Americans.

US authorities have not said Huawei has done anything nefarious. Almost all concerns are about what could or would happen.

Someone tasked with national security recommendations must consider the future scenarios that could unfold as a result of present-state policy. This is why countries around the world have long considered basics like agriculture as an essential component national security. This isn't because they think other countries are poisoning their food during times of peace, it's because a reliance on basic needs gives excessive power to the country supplying it.

I highly suggest reading some actual official reports to get a non-clickbait version of the argument:

https://republicans-intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligenc...

> Almost all concerns are about what could or would happen.

...which is why they now want to show the source code.

Where does this imply, that that implies, that backdoors have been planted in the past, from which you suppose a straw-man argument?

Networking hardware requires continued security updates and support for secure operation. The current source code has no relevance to this concern.

You should read the report I posted -- You'll find that there are zero concerns in it about problems with Huawei's current code.

An offer to audit the current source would only be relevant to a concern with the current source code.

Here are some links about that 2017 quantum video call. I've narrowed down my selection to (perceived, I may be wrong) Western media. Searching the names of both participants appears to yield the best results, they are "Chunli Bai" and "Anton Zeilinger".

It would seem that no China-sympathetic media left it out to herald it as a sensation, whereas in Western media, reports appear to be mostly confined to scientific[0][1] or alternative[2] medias, a notable exception being the DailyMail/tabloid[3] article(?).

I only have a very rudimentary understanding of both cryptography and quantum mechanics, any takes on the actual significance of this?

[0]: https://phys.org/news/2017-09-team-world-space-ground-quantu...

[1]: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/china-s-quantum-sate...

[2]: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xwg53k/china-is-another-s...

[3]: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4930302/Chin...

This story is amazing. As a professional cryptographer I urge HN to vote it to the top of the front page.

It feels like it is [amazing], but it also feels like propaganda. (Of course it could be both: propaganda can be based on truth.)

Can you expand a little on why you find it amazing?

Since I’ve stepped in it by letting my amusement show:

1. Quantum encryption (actually quantum key distribution) is not going to make Huawei — or anyone’s — cellular networks “hack proof”. Nor does this even matter.

2. We already have very strong classical encryption algorithms, unless the US or someone has a quantum computer. People don’t break networks in frontal attacks on encryption schemes.

3. The rest of the article is bonkers.

It is very easy to create backdoor classical encryption systems by adding multiple keys, especially for public key cryptosystems. If this is done in hardware, you'd be hard pressed to find it.

Not so with quantum encryption. At least I'm not aware of research that shows that this can be done. Though I have seen some interesting spying instead of the bass quantum encryption schemes which didn't use all of the phase and magnitude.

I have no reason to believe this is true. Side channel attacks on QKD have been very effective, which is a strong indication that the ability to trust your hardware is essential to the functioning of these systems. You’re proposing a model where one cannot trust their hardware, and I see no evidence that modern QKD systems have been hardened against that attack.

PS I’ve worked a lot on cryptographic backdoors in the non-QKD setting but I don’t work on QKD.

Cheers! :)

I just saw a bunch of Google's Ads about Huawei's "Facts" from the WSJ online edition: ie: "Fact: Ripping and replacing Huawei equipment from the US rural areas will be very difficult..." They are ramping up their campaign against the U.S gov claim.

The telecoms research company I used to work for has decided to get into the business of writing "white papers" for Huawei that are not far removed from this piece of "tech journalism".

Good for short term revenues, but not good for long term reputation. Part of the reason I am no longer working there.

Vulnerability to hacking is only a minor issue. It's more about not investing in a company (Huawei) that is in bed with a government party that is and has been looking to undermine US/western interests.

Whose interests?

US/Western companies have been undermining interests of people living in those countries themselves for quite some time by outsourcing and tax tricks. And ultimately their own as Chinese became good at cloning, then some innovation by portion at things they build...

Isn't this just the Qualcomm tax, with a sprinkling of worry about state power without judicial checks?

This article seems to make some pretty big, unsubstantiated claims.

ie "America’s spies hijacked the Trump Administration’s trade agenda and turned into a global campaign against Huawei. This has been a humiliating failure."

They also mention Huawei's founder's interview with the economist: "...in an interview with The Economist:" However The Economist link routes to another asia times article that does not mention The Economist anywhere.

My limited understanding is that quantum cryptography is still a relatively nascent field, and unlikely to be production ready for the roll out of 5G networks (though, admittedly, I could be wrong about this).

In one of the linked to articles (https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/07/article/us-china-tech-war-...) they say "The ultimate form of data security is quantum communications, an application of physics that China has pioneered." and link to https://www.insidescience.org/news/china-leader-quantum-comm... which describes a set of events that don't seem to be corroborated by any reputable publication, and don't appear in the wikipedias or publications of the scientists mentioned (despite descriptions of similar, more experimental demonstrations)

I'm not familiar with the Asia Times but this article (and others they link to), at least, seem propaganda-y?

Paywalled, but that interview does appear to exist[0][1].

From the looks of things, Asia Times is HK-based, but the confusing whole online/dropping-online-from-the-name-who-are-they-now-exactly (last paragraph in introductory Wiki-text) makes me wonder...

[0]: https://www.economist.com/business/2019/09/12/ren-zhengfei-m...

[1]: https://www.economist.com/business/2019/09/12/a-transcript-o...

[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia_Times

What a beautiful example of garbage tier politically-motivated tech reporting. It checks all the boxes:

New, unhackable technology that the security community doesn't want

Quantum is here to save the day

Trying to connect to current events with absolutely no evidence, including the latest Trump tweet

Party A had bad motivations, but party B has pristine pure motivations the entire time. No evidence is offered to support this.

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