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India, China Try Import Regulations As Security Tools
An anonymous reader writes "The Register reports that the Chinese government is forcing vendors to cough up the source code to their encryption alogrithms before they can sell their equipment to the Chinese government. The EU doesn't seem to like it, but if I were in their position I'd want the same thing."
China's biggest neighbor goes further; another anonymous reader writes "Telco equipment from China could have spyware that gives access to telcom networks in India. The Indian government has officially told mobile operators not to import any equipment manufactured by Chinese vendors, including Huawei and ZTE. The ban order follows concerns raised by the Home Ministry that telecom equipment from some countries could have spyware or malware that gives intelligence agencies across the border access to telecom networks in India. The biggest gainers from the move could be Ericsson, Nokia, and Siemens, which have been losing market share to aggressive Chinese equipment-makers in India."
are the ones that are open to peer review. So Kudos to the Chinese for being smart enough to make these idiot companies with closed-source encryption technologies provide them with the source code for review. Good encryption does not rely on obfuscation of code and processes!
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
This seems like a natural progression down the line of diminishing trust between countries. It's not very surprising, especially since the Chinese government *may* have been 'supportive' of some of the China/Google hacking. It appears the downside of possibly endorsing or supporting security breaches is other people/countries/etc will suspect you of it from that point on.
... and I can't blame India for not trusting Chinese technology. Nobody wins when no one trusts each other.
I can't blame the Chinese government for wanting to have the encryption information
If you're going to give your source code to the Chinese, you know for certain they will copy it and never buy a product from you again.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Security through security!
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Unless the source can be compiled from scratch and used in place of the pre-compiled versions, including flashing of firmware, creation of installable ROM images or OS installs, having source code guaranteed by analysis to be exploit-free gains the user nothing. There could still be spyware in the final product. Short of self-installing, I guess creation of bit-equivalent or checksum-equivalent binaries would be good enough as a verification mechanism.
Yes, India is, like, right now in the process of auctioning 3G licenses. This will really bring benefits to Ericsson and Nokia Siemens.
One that hath name thou can not otter
in the 80's and 90's American manufacturers gave away their technology to the Chinese to get a piece of the huge Chinese market. This allowed the Chinese to modernize their manufacturing technology by decades in a few years. Then instead of opening their markets, China flooded the world markets and decimated the foreign competition.
One might hope managers of corporations would learn from the past...
Why do obnoxious dumbasses like you bring up poverty everytime India does something good or aspires for something that only developed countries has 'rights' to? A developing country cannot aspire to have security and be able to defend itself from commie and islamic terror neighbours? Cant it become self-sufficient in space, defence and other technological advances? Because it is poor, the entire populace is doomed to live in 15th century?