US lawmakers say Huawei poses security threat | Hacker News Reader

US lawmakers say Huawei poses security threat

online.wsj.com

38 pointschermanowicz22 comments

That's pretty rich, maybe they should ban AT&T as a security threat for spying on Americans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A) or hell, why not the NSA too (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/)

I doubt they're worried about spying on Americans. Spying on the (our) government (and stealing trade secrets) is another matter. And that's what's it's all about. Right or wrong.

"Congress has no intention to destroy American jobs by outsourcing citizen monitoring to foreign countries. Eavesdroppers are the backbone of this country!"

Huawei were also banned earlier this year from bidding for parts of Australia's National Broadband Network, following advice from Australia's secret service organisation (ASIO) who work closely with the Americans. I wish ASIO was just as concerned about my communications being monitored by the USA (or for that matter, themselves)...

Australia sucks America's dick more and more every day. It's one of the main things I hated when I lived there.

Get used to it. Pro-US attitudes should be more prevalent in all of Asia the more aggressive China becomes, since the local countries will need the help.

(Yes, there is some irony to be found here...)

Somewhat related: Huawei has supported the equipment to build broadband networks in some poorer countries essentially for free. If someone wants details, I can bug a Maroccan friends for reference.

I wonder what is hidden behind word "free". It is not unknown fact that China is getting oil and other natural resources in exchange of infrastructure in some African countries. In this case it might be special market conditions. I'm guessing only but I really don't believe in generosity of corporations (be it Chinese, US or any other country).

It is not uncommon in Africa to have well developed 3G networks and poorly developed landline services. It would not be unreasonable for companies selling land line broadband gear to try and kick start demand in places where consumer interest in landline services is lacking. As an example Nigeria has extremely patchy broadband but is already rolling out LTE.

I guess what lrem is implying is that this equipment is "payed for" by allowing the Chinese to spy on the citizens/government/corporations of the recipient country through backdoored Huawei equipment as hinted to by the article.

I'm not implying that. It might be one reason for the giveaway. But I can think of others, like proving to someone that can actually pay that they're able to connect a country without things blowing up. This might be pretty important in such a market. Or, even simpler, they just want to introduce some kind of vendor lock-in.

But support is not free. When it comes for durability Huawei/ZTE devices are worst of them. I am sure same is true for their networking equipments.

If the Chinese government wanted, couldn't they bug iPhones just as easily? They're manufactured in China, after all...

The security of the infrastructure lies in the backbone, not the terminals.

If you "own" the backbone you can spy and/or paralize the whole country.

The kind of interception abilities they're worried about come from intentionally introduced flaws in the software (or, less commonly, in an ASIC or similar). This is why cisco equipment can be manufactured in china and not cause worries (to the US) but the counterfeit cisco gear is a serious concern. Additional bugs or chips that didn't belong are relatively easily detected - nation states play at things like intentionally weakened random number generators or side channel leakage.

Ah, right, I guess that's the salient point: Additional chips are easily detected. Thanks for the clarification.

Perhaps they would be more accommodating if the US Gov't hadn't asked our networking and phone companies to put surveillance backdoors into gear [1] for better wire tapping. This seems to be a standard deal, the Greeks were all up in arms because of it (in their case it was the Vodaphone network [2] which had state sponsored built in holes.

The could take the high road and order Cisco and AT&T to make their gear un-tappable so that they would be sure no Nation-state could use it to spy on us, of course that would make them sad.

[1] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48695618/ns/technology_and_scien...

[2] http://www.salon.com/2012/05/06/surveillance_state_democracy...

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_wiretapping_case_2004%E2%...

For more info, watch last night's airing of 60 minutes.. which included a full 15-minute hit piece on Huawei..

Article: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57527441/huawei-probed...

Video: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7424702n

More info: https://www.networkworld.com/community/node/81554

Uh, can you spell P.R.O.T.E.C.T.I.O.N.I.S.M?

That must be it, mixed with some paranoia, since I didn't see them show any proof for those allegations. They should just ban Apple products in China.

The Economist did a good, balanced piece on this subject: http://www.economist.com/node/21559922

Wonder when we'll see a protest against _NSAKEY...

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