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Is Your Antivirus Made By the Chinese Government?

Posted by samzenpus on from the great-security-wall dept.

guanxi writes "Huawei, a large Chinese telecom and IT company with close ties to the Chinese military has faced obstacles doing business in other countries, because governments are concerned about giving them access to critical infrastructure. Huawei Symantec is a joint venture with one of the world's largest IT security companies which sells security products in the US. Would the Chinese or other governments take the opportunity to create back doors into western IT networks? Wouldn't they be crazy not to?"

12 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. We'd never do such a thing by tomalpha · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Would the Chinese or other governments take the opportunity to create back doors into western IT networks? Wouldn't they be crazy not to?

    Would the US or other Western governments take the opportunity to create back doors into Chinese IT networks? Wouldn't they be crazy not to?

    1. Re:We'd never do such a thing by jimicus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Certainly used to be the case that Symantec Enterprise AV wasn't too bad. Small footprint, didn't hog system resources, didn't clutter up the desktop with pointless "I'm still here! Aren't I wonderful!" alerts.

      Too much, in fact. As a sysadmin I regularly had people ask me to install AV or (in one or two cases) go out and install a third-party AV product, thinking I'd shipped them a PC with no AV.

    2. Re:We'd never do such a thing by pmontra · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Who needs the backdoors supposedly made by Symantec when they already installed the ones supposedly made by Microsoft? Or a BIOS or hardware itself?

    3. Re:We'd never do such a thing by no+known+priors · · Score: 4, Insightful

      China is in no way communist. It's as capitalist as they come. They only thing "communist" about them is the name of the party in power. What's the similarity between the economic and political systems of the former USSR (along its 70 odd year life), Cuba (over the last 50 odd years), Vietnam since 1975, PRC since '49, North Korea since the '50s, and Romania, East Germany, and other Eastern European "Warsaw Bloc" countries when they were "communist"?

      Oh wait, fuck all. Apart from, most of the time, the party in power having the word "communist" in its name.

      Sure, there are many companies that are owned by the government in China. There are also a lot more that aren't. That's part of the reason you hear all these cases of people dying from contaminated milk products and the like. Capitalists making a killing. Saving money at any cost.

      Wikipedia (not a great source for most political ideas) says:

      The only communist state which still traditionally follows Marxist-Leninist doctrine and maintains a largely planned economy is Cuba, which describes itself as "a socialist state guided by ideas of Marx, Engels and Lenin and in transition to a communist society".

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    4. Re:We'd never do such a thing by Moryath · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Antivirus programs are an important part of any sytem to protect you against virus infection. They work well against almost every virus.*

      *-more than a week old
      *-that hasn't already infected the system
      *-that doesn't exploit something in the system running lower level than the AV program
      *-that doesn't exploit some hole in the code of the AV program itself
      *-that doesn't successfully evade detection just-long-enough to shut down the AV program from behind
      *-that doesn't successfully exploit people via social engineering and scareware tactics

  2. ClamAV, Open Source Antivirus by Compaqt · · Score: 2, Insightful

    OK, the usual caveats apply about logic bombs hidden in open source, but still, at least when the source is open you have a fighting chance at discerning a backdoor.

    http://www.clamav.net/lang/en/

    There's a Windows version, too (Immunet):
    http://www.clamav.net/lang/en/about/win32/

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  3. My First reaction is... by Fallen+Andy · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Holy Fuck ....

    I don't often say that, being a polite englishman, but - so many of the USB telecoms dongles using UMTS/HSPA are *made* by Huawei (here in Greece from last night, the WIND dongle i was using ...)

    But after a moments thought, how would i be reassured if it was U.S. manufactured? or indeed anywhere else?

    Chill out dudes - most of what you see is manufactured by 4-5 manufacturers with names like FoxConn, Compal etc...

    ...and conspiracy theories aside, I personally see the Chinese as being 21st century versions of what happened in my own country in the 19th...

    Mind the alligators and have a nice day

    Andy

    1. Re:My First reaction is... by JasterBobaMereel · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Made in China - checked by the NSA, found to be clean

      Made in the USA - checked by the NSA, backdoor working correctly ...

      --
      Puteulanus fenestra mortis
  4. Witch-hunt by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I am shocked to see such jingoism on Slashdot. Just look at the summary, it drips with a false "us/them" mentality. On one side, the side of goodness and light, "the West" (whatever that means) and on the other side, "the Other", which takes the form of the main villain of the 21st century, those scary Chinese. It is simply assumed that "the Chinese" will sabotage any network they come in contact with...because...well, because uh...why, exactly? It's just the Western mindset of "everyone is always out to get us" that requires the creation of these scarecrows. Much like the McCarthy witch-hunt, this is going in search of a scary monster that doesn't exist. There was no WMD in Iraq, there were no communists in the State Department, and the Chinese are not out to get us. The parallels between these situations are eerily similar.

    --
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    1. Re:Witch-hunt by ti1ion · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So, why exactly is the parent comment moderated as a "troll?" It only points out the obvious! Oh, wait, it's the mock sarcasm, that must be it. Although, perhaps the author genuinely felt that this "sophisticated" tech audience, that delights in ripping apart knee-jerk statements/policies on other topics, would so easily join the herd on this ridiculous topic.

      Upon reading the summary, my first thought was writing "Oh no! The Chinese! The Chinese! Protect your wives and daughters against the Chinese!" What a bunch of nonsense.

      American corporations have been making and selling computer software for decades -- how many here are worried about government bugs in that software? Should the Chinese buy US made software? How about the Russians, or anyone else? How is it that Windows has 90% percent market share all over the world and governments are not screaming to have it removed? Talk about an opportunity to install secret access! And, if we assume the US government *has* been installing secret bits into US made software, what makes the US (from a foreigner's perspective) any better than China?

      And the most amusing thing about this is that it was the US that pushed, and pushed hard, to open China to US trade. When Nixon made his trip to China, it was historic. So, after opening Pandora's Box, the US desperately wants to close it. Got it. Nothing shows decline like trading confidence for fear.

      That's right, the Chinese are coming to get you. And you know what, you are so stupid (look at your education system!) that you wouldn't even be able to figure it out! That's what this story indicates to me. Forget actually having the knowledge and integrity to prove something, we'll just go on accusations. After all, everyone knows Linux is made by/for Communists and is anti-American. It's also full of security holes and opens the user up to all sorts of expensive lawsuits because those Linux Commies stole code from the good, America loving, closed-source corporations that only have the end user's best interests in mind when creating exceptional software.

    2. Re:Witch-hunt by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It is simply assumed that "the Chinese" will sabotage any network they come in contact with...because...well, because uh...why, exactly? It's just the Western mindset of "everyone is always out to get us" that requires the creation of these scarecrows.

      Because we've learned from history? It used to be that people flying to France on business were advised not to discuss anything commercially sensitive on their flights - Air France had a habit of allowing bugging of the business class seats and commercial information was passed on to other French companies. We almost certainly did the same thing on British Airways flights, although we seemed to be better at not getting caught.

      Inserting back doors into networks is just the next step in this same approach. We assume that they're doing it, because we've been doing it for the last few decades and it would be surprising if any country that had the capability to do so didn't.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  5. Japan? by khasim · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah, but it's probably happening at layer 2 and 3, since a lot of American networks are being offshored to Japan who in turn hires the cheapest third country nationals (Chinese CCNA's) to administrate.

    Japan? Why Japan? Most companies I now (including the one I work at) have gone straight to China. And the network is via China's telco. And the guys running the systems are Chinese.

    This isn't "back door". This is inviting them in the front door and giving them the keys to house so they can look after it for you.